www.drupal.org Be prepared to spend some time learning--this is not plug and play but you can design the website you want. You will still need to pay for hosting. There are other similar programs. Find one that suits you. This may be a step you want to avoid taking until you have a book or two out. I did it first, so I don't know for sure.
Cover art Learning to do this yourself is FUN. Again, not easy.
Istockphoto Stock art that can be used as a base for a cover design
DeviantArt For the most part amateur graphics artists, some who are willing to contract their art. They also generally show where they got the elements in any particular piece.
Lots of others--look around
Get a good graphic arts program. GIMP is free open source software and seems to be capable of most of what the others can do. Be ready for a steep learning curve.
Contact schools in your area and find out if the graphics arts teachers can recommend a student who can do your cover more cheaply (the teachers usually know who's up to it).
Find out if there are community resources you can use.
If you can't find what you need, take your own photos
Remember that the resolution of your cover art is important--and I'm not talking about DPI. A 300 dpi image that's four inches square isn't going to help. A 72 dpi image that's 30 inches square is going to have much more resolution (although you can increase the 30 inch image to 300 dpi, it will just decrease the size correspondingly so that you end up with the same resolution)
Plan ahead, decide what you want before you go "shopping"
myecovermaker.com A mass solution, with limited scope but fine if you want something simple. If you have the image you want, they can put it on a pile of books (in an image) but you need to be a member to use this option. The cover below was one of the free version.
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Serif.com
ribbet.com (NOT ribbit.com--that's something else entirely)
Book Trailers
Animoto.com You can create a 30 second book trailer free, but as an online resource their scope is limited. This trailer is one of their free version.
Social Media
Facebook or Myspace, some similar site. Make an author page, not a personal page
Twitter--create a twitter account in your author name
Blogging (Since you're reading this you obviously know about blogging)
Give stuff away, and require that to be in the "drawing" they need to spread the word.
INVITE INVITE INVITE--get your name out there.
Community resources--newspapers, church groups, writing groups, reading groups. Get used to standing up in front of people. Contact these groups about presentations.
Copyright registration
www.copyright.gov (i.e., you don't need to go through one of those we'll-charge-through-the-nose companies. And you definitely don't need a lawyer to do it for you.) At this point, basic copyright registration is $35 for one item. The main advantage of paying $150 for having someone else do it for you is that they handle the hassles. Be careful, though. Some of those companies don't actually pay for the copyright--read the small print. They offer "copyright protection" and say they'll watch for copyright infringement. Most people say that you don't need official copyright registration because you've already got an electronic trail.
Edits
If you know other authors who are good with this, offer to trade your books for theirs.
"Good enough" is NOT good enough!
Do a grammar check--some of the things your eyes don't catch will show up in a grammar check.
Don't trust your spellchecker, and NEVER use replace-all
Read the book backwards, a line at a time. Time consuming but it helps
If you know of other resources let me know.
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