[Gonso]

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I'm from the less-is-more school and would prefer very little writing on the cover and back cover. Back covers in particular tend to have too much writing imo (not just poker books). But that's Mason's decision. Maybe we could use "Volume I" as the subtitle?

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It somehow seems more correct to do this, ala the HoH books. I also hate the idea of any kind of TOC on the cover, even if it's good marketing. It's not good design IMO

TITLE BIG, SIMPLE
volume 2: informative subtitle
authors' names

price of book maybe

Other than that, I'm trying for something that would look good sitting on someone's coffee table. Nothing against the standard 2+2 covers like 7CSFAP or SSHE, but those covers are much more function than form.

The back cover to me is where you put everything - I'm thinking in terms of what a DVD cover layout look like, I think it does well for books as well. This can look good even if it's a little busy.

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Can you make the main title slightly smaller so it doesn't come so close to the edges? Or is that important to the design?

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Yes, but there's kind of a design challenge I'm trying to figure out. First, I can't find a way to make the title look good breaking it into several lines, case in point:

Professional No Limit
Hold 'em: Volume 1
Learn to Think and Play
Like a Professional

It's half a paragraph and looks like a poem. Now it's an even longer first line now that 'Volume 1' is part of the main title and not the subtitle. To make this more narrow requires that I skinny up the text or just use smaller text... it will be kinda small as a one line.

I have some ideas though of other things I can do... I never really get there on day 1 of design anyway. In this case I was shooting for a kind of rustic look for the artwork but very clean, sharp text. It's loses the effect with too much text, of if the text is too small.

Thanks for the compliments and I guess the king stays then.