Exercise - Judging a book by it's cover Part 2

I had some ideas for different backgrounds.

Firstly an American flag;

 It doesn't lend itself well to much writing on the back of the cover

does this background count as an illustration?
I also thought I could use a modified version of a map of America as the background and tried some experiments with pastel and Paintshop

I think, to make the lettering stand out these become a bit washed out. I tried a negative version

It's more striking but it looks a bit odd. I don't think the idea is good enough to spend the time fiddling with the colours.

I tried a  watercolour map

This one's too wishy washy

These are better. I like the second one best but the dark splodge gets in the way of the blurb so I went with the top one to give

 With the colourful background you don't need the image of the motorcyclist.

I think this would be attractive enough to get potential buyers to stop and pick it up.