I rarely pick up a book based on cover alone, unless it happens to hit all my particular buttons–it usually has to be a combination of cover and title to twig my interest.

If I _didn't_ see the title, I think you'd have a 50/50 I'd pick up that book, depending on what else was around it (the artwork is lovely, but brown tones are not one of my buttons, I'd be less likely to look closer and see the art).

That said, I much prefer the aesthetics of the title on the bottom there; there's already a lot of detail going on in the top half of the cover, and having the image 'split' the title and byline looks awkward to me, the artwork gets lost behind the two warring sets of stark lettering and you lose the 'eye guide' of where you should look.

The best compromise I can suggest is to put both at the top, possibly 'shifting' the image down slightly to re-balance it if needed.