The author says:

Hiking Without Dave is a true account of the author’s hike of the entire 1,440-mile Buckeye Trail in Ohio. CW and his younger brother Dave had talked of hiking the Appalachian Trail, but before they could he lost Dave to suicide. CW’s hike and his writing about it was part of his healing process. The book intertwines the hiking account with stories about Dave. It will appeal to hikers, but also to anyone whose life has been touched by the tragedy of suicide. The Buckeye Trail is marked by blue blazes, thus the importance of the blaze on the tree to the right of the hiker and the choice of blue lettering.

Nathan says:

My condolences on your loss.

I think you’ve got a lot of good elements.  Here’s what I’d try to make it stronger:

I definitely think “Dave” in the title should be no smaller than any other word, and possibly biggest — it is, after all, the interesting/quirky part of your title, and yet it’s easy not to notice at thumbnail size.  One thing to try would be placing each word of the title on its own line, with “Dave” at the same font size as “Hiking.”  Ideally, the original photo is large enough that you could fit more of it on the cover, making the hiking figure smaller so the increased type size wouldn’t overlap.

A good rule of thumb is “the smaller and denser the type, the more readable the font needs to be.”  Experiment with a clearer, more “bookish” font for the subtitle — you could instead render the byline in the title font.

You might also want to tweak — very, very subtly — the color tones of the photograph, to counter that “straight out of the digital camera” vibe. Here are some ideas (of course, because I was working from your complete cover, my variations affect the type as well):

Other ideas?

10/20/14 Edit: The author says:

Thank you for all the comments on the cover for Hiking Without Dave. They are very much appreciated. I am resubmitting the cover with some changes. Some comments were about the title font being perhaps too whimsical for the subject of this book. Even though it deals with suicide, there is much humor in both the recounting of memories of the author and his brother and in his hike without his brother. It is a balance of humor and seriousness. The texture of the title font has been changed to be more bark-like.

The author says:

This is the true story of a first mate who agrees to a two-year voyage aboard a 44-foot, schooner to impress her new boy friend. She lacks basic sailing, seamanship, and swimming skills while he is competent but sometimes difficult. Their trip begins in California, continues down the west coast of Mexico and Central America, through the Panama Canal, to Colombia, Venezuela and through the Caribbean to Florida. Experienced blue water sailors will love the adventures. Travel readers will enjoy a book that uses sailing terminology sparingly.

Nathan says:

You’ve got a good cover photo — it’s obviously a sailboat, but not just a sailboat, and focuses as much on interesting landscape at the horizon as on the boat itself. So let’s change the type around so that it supports the photo instead of fights against it.

First: Take a look at the nonfiction books you know. 99 times out of 100*, the title and subtitle are separated not with a colon, but with a different line, a different type size, and often a different typeface. The title is more important that the subtitle, so make it look more important.

Second: The Verdana-esque font is too common and unremarkable to add anything to the cover. If the two-word title were large enough to extend from side to side, it would be large enough that a more ornate or complex font wouldn’t limit the readability (don’t go overboard, though). How about something strongly classical or historic-looking? Maybe something hand written? You can then render the subtitle in a font that’s clearly readable, but more interesting than Verdana.

Third: The way the subtitle slops down into the bottom half of the photo makes it look like the type was placed without knowing what image would go behind it. Don’t let the type fight against the photo; place it all in the top half of the cover so it doesn’t get lost against the mountains.

Fourth: “By” is unnecessary for identifying the author, and the added room gained by deleting it would allow the author’s name to be larger and more easily readable. (Placing a slight halo around the name will keep it from getting lost against the photo.)

Here’s a five-minute mockup of the kind of fonts and type placement you could use (I didn’t have access to the original image, so just imagine this on top of the sailboat photo).  These are probably not the fonts I would decide one, but they were the closest ones to hand that approximated what I’m talking about.

Other ideas?

*And the other one is an accounting report to the board of directors that’s supposed to look boring.