I just heard an interview with someone who went with Dreamstime.com for her book cover work. Post here with your comments on this site or any other similar places to go for cover work. I've also heard of Deviantart.com.

I've used Dreamstime to buy most of the stock photos for my covers. They're probably my top go to site when I'm looking for stock because they have a good selection and their prices are very reasonable. As far as I know though, they don't design covers, just offer the photos.

I go to Deviant Art a lot, mostly for inspirational art (have to be careful looking there though. Lots of stuff you wouldn't want to see. ). I have seen quite a bit of book covers where an author has commissioned an artist. You could probably find someone in a decent price range. I've never looked seriously. There are so many artists on there, I wouldn't even know where to begin.

Correct me if I am wrong, but Dreamstime appears to be a stock-photo catalog. That would be a good resource for someone who has the know-how to make their own cover, or for someone who's looking for images to give to their cover designer. It wouldn't be a very good resource for those of us that are very inept with photomanipulation software.

I've heard of people finding stock images off of Deviantart, but some artists also use that site as a web gallery, so not everything on the site is free use. I agree, though, that if you're careful with browsing, you might be able to find an artist through there.

I stay off of deviantart for the aforementioned reasons

Here is what I use for my image search needs: http://labs.creativecommons.org/demos/search/?beta=1&q=
It is a creative commons search which lets you search google images or flickr for copyright free images. 'Tis great. As to designing covers themselves, I don't have any tips other than Photoshop and Google for tutorials

eru