Give HN: My latest book on entrepreneurship
personalopz.com
personalopz.com
The comments about the colors are valid.
I once worked on a fairly complicated hardware (video encoder) that took over a year to develop, and during an important demo, the most comments I got was something about color of one of the LEDs. It was annoying to hear those comments back then, but it has made me wiser about looks being an important aspect of a product. Aesthetics are important (at least for others :)).
I hope people do look past the cover (which I will work on improving) and read a few of the chapters. And ultimately even listen to the lectures which I have found to be a very inspirational resource. Thanks again to Stanford for providing it.
:) Great attitude towards feedback. Work on the colors!
I would definitely redesign the cover if I were you. It's not just that it's illegible, it also looks like blood splattered on a wall.
Now, I know this is how you meant it to be, because of the word "execution", etc. but it is the design equivalent of a pun. Puns aren't necessarily bad by definition, they just usually are because they apply intelligence to the wrong problem.
The other point to make is that, funnily enough, the pun's idea is itself badly executed. It really does look like you did the cover yourself in MacPaint. If you're still keen on using this pun, there are other ways to execute the same idea. For example, you could just have the word Execution in blood on the wall, but the other lines on a non-patterned background, in a more legible typeface.
Looks interesting though, I'll be reading it later this week. Congrats on writing a book.
Thanks for the tip.
As others have said the cover is pretty bad. It is hard to read. It looks childish. Have a professional design your covers and you'll probably see more sales.
Regardless, if it's good and gets good reviews it probably won't matter :) But for those early adopters, it matters.