[yossarian]

As a person who is extremely left-brained, I think your original cover is excellent.

Left brained people are turned off when information sources also seek to be art sources.

Left brained people like their informational books to be clean and to-the-point.

I think your cover will do well to reach your niche audience which is rational, scientific types like myself. (an audience for whom there are very few good PD sources. Try finding a PD speaker who doesn't mention service to God, unconditional love, or some kind of unscientific mish-mash reasoning that includes inaccurate statements about quantum mechanics, Einstein, and psychology. The level of scientific illiteracy among the PD-crowd is ridiculous - Steve is a rare exception)

When I was first linked to your website, one of the things I liked was the simple style. If it had looked like a doily New Age site with a yellow background on pink italics with a flower in the title, I would probably never have read it.

There are lots of PD people who focus on pretty graphics. To me the Steve Pavlina brand is unique because it's written by a guy with a math degree in a highly rational style. I can link Steve Pavlina articles to pure atheists with Ph.Ds and they will find value, whereas if the site looked like your typical clichéd "Love the skin you're in" stuff they wouldn't even read it.