It doesn't need that level of hand-holding, really, these days. A few years back it was a bit more difficult. Today the options are well known and really usable by a beginner (eg: passenger).

EngineYard brings a premium service, but none of my customers have been interested to pay the premium. They all go on SliceHost, Joyent, or home-hosted machines.

Sidepoint: around me, most non-rubyists developers don't deploy their apps themselves, whereas all the people I know who work with Rails or Sinatra do deploy themselves. I believe this may be thanks to Capistrano et al, maybe.