The author says:
This is a book I wrote for people who are going to have open heart surgery. It’s advice seen through the patient’s perspective. I did this with no understanding of covers and I know it’s poor.
Nathan says:
Just so I could understand the content a bit better, I pulled in the Amazon description:
The author found himself facing open-heart surgery. Researching the Internet, he found lots of scary stuff that led to terrible fear. The books he found didn’t give a good idea of what it was going to be like from the patient’s point of view, and so he resolved to keep a day by day diary of the whole process, from diagnosis to recovery, detailed here in “The Road Map”.
The Road Map doesn’t replace existing books, nor does it attempt to advise you on surgical matters. It relates the details of diagnosis, preparing for surgery, and recovery: the things that can only be experienced by those who have undergone a heart bypass procedure.
I think that, because the book emphasizes the personal and experiential side, you ought to begin with the image of a person. Maybe someone being advised by a doctor, or someone in a hospital bed receiving a shoulder-hug from a visitor. Emphasize that this book isn’t about the organ, it’s about the person.
I just searched “patient” in iStockPhoto, and there are scads of images showing a patient in comforting consultation with a healthcare professional (most of them run between $12 and $33 for a license to use them on a book cover). Happy hunting.