Vanity fair

The university professor. The newspaper editor. The public-relations specialist. Each has self-published a novel after running a veritable gauntlet of New York agents and book companies -- a gauntlet that, in recent years, has become more unresponsive and less interested in taking on new books. If you're a fiction writer who doesn't happen to be Stephen King's son, you're lucky to even get a rejection slip these days, which is one reason why these three Las Vegas writers -- each established in his or her field -- have resorted to something that used to be looked down upon among serious scribes: self-publishing.

In the case of UNLV English professor John Irsfeld, it is a long way down -- or up, depending on your view -- into the arena of putting one's own book on the market. Thirty years ago, his name was often mentioned in the same breath as novelist/screenwriter Larry McMurtry's (Lonesome Dove, Brokeback Mountain). Now, after having published two acclaimed but slow-selling books in the 1970s, and two more since then with smaller university presses, Irsfeld has just brought out Night Moves, a dark, dramatic thriller, via BookSurge, an on-demand self-publishing outfit bought by Amazon in 2005.

"BookSurge is a vanity press, but not like in the old days," Irsfeld says. "Before, you used to have to pay some guy a lot of money to get your book published. You'd give him tens of thousands of dollars to print up the books, and then you'd have to buy copies from him. A few friends and family members would buy books at a few of your signings maybe, and the rest would just sit in a warehouse."

Naturally, the rise in self-publishing has coincided with the advent of new technologies, making musty old warehouses full of unsold tomes a thing of the past. Technology has also allowed print-on-demand companies to sprout up everywhere on the Internet -- AuthorHouse, BookSurge and Lulu are among the best-known. What is remarkable, though, is to see just how many artists (and hacks), who in years past might have found an easy route toward signing a book contract with an East Coast publisher, have made the leap into self-publishing.

"When I began this racket 30 years ago, you wrote a letter to an agent and that person would at least write you back to say no," Irsfeld observes. "This is no longer the case. What I discovered is that people no longer feel obligated to respond to you at all."

Irsfeld insists that his decision to self-publish is prompted by his age -- he turned 70 this year -- and the fact that all the publishing contacts he worked with are either retired or dead. "I said, 'You know what? I don't have time for this game.'" And so he submitted his manuscript to BookSurge.

According to Irsfeld, working with BookSurge is profoundly simple. It costs $499 to start the deal, and once you submit your manuscript, BookSurge provides the writer with an electronic proof. You can make changes to this proof, but any more than, say, 50 corrections and the company begins to charge you extra. (This practice isn't much different from what New York publishers do when working with up-and-coming writers.) The idea, then, is to turn in as "clean" and error-free a manuscript as humanly possible.

"I made so many changes that I had to pay an extra $75," says Irsfeld, who did not consult with an editor before submitting his novel to BookSurge. "The people there are good to work with, and, of course, I thought the price was good."

But the reason Irsfeld chose BookSurge over other companies is because Amazon owns it. The company provided an ISBN number "and all that stuff I don't like to bother with," he says. Like any company, BookSurge likely makes money on the marketing side of things. Irsfeld saved money by designing the book cover for Night Moves himself.

"It looks pretty good, I think," he says. "Also, the book has only been out a week, and I've already made $48. I ordered one of my books online like I would any other book, and within a week it arrived in a box on my doorstep. You can't tell it's self-published or print-on-demand."

Every time someone buys a copy of Night Moves, Irsfeld makes four bucks (which is more than he'd make per copy if he were signed to a big publisher in New York). His account is equipped with a hypertext clicker that lets him know when and where a book was bought, how much was paid, and how much he was paid. The money is routed directly into his bank account.

As gripping and satisfying as Night Moves may be as a narrative, the book lacks the one thing many self-published authors should consider: a marketing plan. ("I eventually figured out that I was meant to write books, not promote them," explains Irsfeld.) But for Review-Journal assistant editorial page editor Vin Suprynowicz, self-publishing a novel is half the battle. Without a way to reach readers, your book, like Irsfeld's, can only be stumbled upon while browsing on Amazon.

Suprynowicz has published three books, two nonfiction collections (Send in the Waco Killers, The Ballad of Carl Drega) and one postmodern pulp-adventure novel (The Black Arrow), through his own company, Mountain Media. He has just finished up a crime novel starring an Elvis impersonator that's slated for an early 2008 publication. Unlike Irsfeld, Suprynowicz sinks quite a bit of money into editing and producing his books, relying on the support of the libertarian community to bring them to people's attention.

"I get invitations to speak to libertarian groups and gun-rights groups," says Suprynowicz, who also contributes columns to magazines like Shotgun News (and whose books have been reviewed favorably in Guns & Ammo). "My friend Rick Tompkins taught me this: You can set up a table at a convention and maybe sell one book. But if you get in front of a bunch of people and say, 'These stories are in this book," you will sell 30. But you have to go out and do something. If your marketing plan is to be a genius, you're in trouble. You need a plan."

Suprynowicz sees traditional publishing companies as "a dying industry, and it's a good thing." He's dealt with enough literary agents to know they no longer push books.

"The flow is going the other way," he observes. "They have lunch, and the publisher says I need Raise the Titanic, only with a lesbian African-American protagonist. The agent goes back to the author, says, 'I need an eight-page treatment by Wednesday.' Sure, this process has been around for a while, but is this supposed to create great literature?"

Christine McKellar, meanwhile, knocked on agents' doors until her knuckles hurt. She attended several writers' conferences, pitching her romance-adventure novel, A Port of No Return, to the top agents in the country. When she finally landed an agent, that person confided to McKellar that her book "would be on the backburner in lieu of 'more important projects.'"

So she decided to self-publish. Given her marketing background, she believed she could find an audience for her book.

And she did, working out deals with a local Talbots and the Princess cruise line, where she lectures on the pitfalls of self-publishing in an on-ship seminar that attracts hundreds of people interested in finding a way to get their own manuscripts into print.

"In hindsight, it wasn't the sleigh ride I thought it would be," says McKellar of her self-publishing efforts. "But I learned things I would never have learned if I had just signed on with an agent. I'd do it all over again, rather than wait two years for my book to come out." Her new book, a mystery titled The Devil's Valet, will be self-published next month (with a Kirkus review already noting that the book would make for a great film).

And Irsfeld has an entire backlog of books -- fiction, nonfiction -- that he's dutifully polishing before publishing them via BookSurge.

"I have 10 or 11 manuscripts, some of which are hideous, some of which have their particular charm," he says. "I can see the horizon narrowing. We don't have all the time in the world as writers, and these things need to be done."

Vin Suprynowicz signs copies of his books 6 p.m. Nov. 2 at Cat's Curiosities Book Shop inside the Not Just Antiques Mart (1422 Western Ave., between Charleston and Oakey) with fellow local authors John L. Smith, Bill Branon, Geoff Schumacher, A.D. Hopkins, and Mike Weatherford as part of the Vegas Valley Book Festival. Info: 384-4922.

For more info on A Port of No Return and The Devil's Valet, visit ChristineMcKellar.com.

John Irsfeld's latest novel, Night Moves, can be purchased at Amazon.com.

Jarret Keene is a local author and freelance writer.