Thanks for the feedback!
I understand what you are saying about the series. I didn't say anything about the series in the Kindle book, but I can also change that easily enough. This is for the print version, and it is a little harder to add it later. Plus I don't want to end up down the road with multiple books in the series and have the first one look like it was supposed to be a single book or look out of place with the next books. I hate when I buy a book and years later end up with the whole trilogy or whatever and none of them are the same on my bookshelf. However, by having "book 1" it implies that it is only part of a bigger story, which it really isn't. It is a standalone story on it's own, but the world I created to host the story has a lot of potential for more. I have one more book mostly worked out in my head and about 10k words on paper, but beyond that all I can say is there will be as many books as there are stories I can come up with for the characters in that world. If things go well, it could be dozens.
(BTW, it is fiction, not non-fiction)
Personally, I LOVE a good series, and that is pretty much all I read any more. Most of the books I read don't have an epic story line involved, just a lot of characters that you start to really like who can show up in future stories. For example, I read all the Prey series by John Sanford, and I think there are about 38 of them now. But I also like epic stories as well, be it a trilogy or decology, if each book is a story in its own with a bigger story line that everyone is building toward, I eat it up. Usually it is up to the first book to get me hooked and want more. When I find those, I add that author to my list of books to look for.
Marketing wise, series sell books, at least that is what pretty much every indie author on Amazon will tell you. I want to let people know that more is coming, so they will know to look out for it down the road and end up remembering my name and not just the book name. Ideally I would have loved to spend the next two decades writing a complete series before ever releasing a single one, but after six years, I really just wanted to get this book out there and see if people like it. There is a ton of marketing strategy involved in releasing one book, building a following, then announcing the release of the next, promoting it, running "free weekends" on the first book (after sales have started to drop) to get people hooked, and then finally releasing the next book.
The pattern behind the DNA strand is actually from a picture of a DNA test or map. You know all those little dashes you see in crime shows when they are comparing DNA.. that's what it is, just done subtly in the background to add a little flavor. Some people catch it, some don't.
And this is just the front, the back has the "blurb" and a little about me, and the DNA strand wraps around the spine and back. The book is 318 pages long at 6"x9" with 11pt Garamond font text and a .6" margin all around. If it were the smaller paperback format most of us grew up on, it would be about 411 pages. At 318 pages, I can sell the paperback for $10.99 on Amazon without losing money. I would rather be at $6.99 since I am a new author, but unless I go traditional and order 20,000 books and spend my days trying to sell them to brick and mortar bookstores, I would lose money at that price. Considering paperbacks at brick and mortar stores are up in the $14-17 range these days, it is still not terrible. The eBook version is only $2.99 though, and I do well at that price.
I will look into the kerning on the title text, I just let Photoshop space the characters, and this font uses small caps for lower case, so going from cap to lower it might throw it off a hair. Plus I see the angle on the front of the "F" makes it look like there is a little bit of a gap there.. Easily fixed..