Here's a do-it-yourself site by a first-time novelist, #David Louis Edelman#. It includes book excerpts, forums, a blog, biography, and free audio of Edelman reading from the book. Visitors can also subscribe to announcements of book signings and readings.
Edelman provides a level of detail that few others match. For example, each of his nine Chapter 1 drafts are posted on the site, along with footnotes recounting the editorial decisions made for each draft.
Although Edelman is an experienced Web designer, he contends that anyone with basic computer skills can build an author site similar to his using simple, inexpensive tools like Google Pages and WordPress, a blog service.