Authors Took a Long and Winding Road in Publishing “Shortcuts” : Guidebooks: Fear of a traffic fiasco during the ’84 Olympics provided inspiration. But that never materialized. Finding a printer and a distributor for the book also proved troublesome.

The authors of the hit guidebook “L.A. Shortcuts” took a roundabout road to success. For the most part, though, their route was typical of those traveled by writers who publish their own books.

The inspiration for “L.A. Shortcuts” came to Richard Schwadel and Brian Roberts in 1983, a year before Los Angeles hosted the Summer Olympics, amid widespread fears that the city’s streets and freeways would turn into one big, clogged mess during the games.

Schwadel, 34, and Roberts, 31, never got around to doing a book or pamphlet in time for the Olympics, and traffic never snarled the way it was supposed to. But in late 1984, they started their work anyway.

Little did they know that writing and doing research for the book, a wisecrack-filled guide to avoiding the city’s jammed freeways, would take up their evenings and weekends for four years. “It was the curse of a great idea,” said Schwadel, who like Roberts normally works as a video editor and director.

Book publishers, however, weren’t so keen on it. Schwadel and Roberts sent their manuscript to more than 20 publishers, but only two expressed any interest, and no one made a solid offer.

So Schwadel and Roberts boned up on publishing and decided to put out the book themselves. It wasn’t cheap. They refinanced their homes to raise the necessary cash, a move that made both nervous.

“It’s a real role of the dice, when all of the publishing industry says you don’t have a chance. It’s a crapshoot,” Roberts said.

In typical mom-and-pop publishing fashion, the authors relied on family for help. Schwadel’s wife, Karen Hollowell-Schwadel, was the book’s art director.

“If someone is self-publishing and doesn’t know someone who knows the business, they’re dead in the water,” Schwadel said.

Even with help, complications arose. For example, the authors wanted to bind the book so that it would lie flat, allowing a driver to look at it while keeping both hands on the wheel. The normal way to accomplish that is with a spiral binding. But, Schwadel said, retailers told them that they don’t like spiral-bound books because they often are damaged in shipping and there is no place to display the title on the edge of the volumes.

After a lucky coincidence, Schwadel and Roberts found one of the few printers that could provide the right binding for their soft-cover book. By the middle of last year, it was done.

But before getting the book on retailers’ shelves, the two writers found that they needed a distributor. As virtual unknowns in the business, they didn’t have the necessary entree themselves.

By some measures, the book has been a smash. At B. Dalton Bookseller’s 73 stores in Southern California, it was the top-selling regional guidebook last year, and it remains high on the list this year.

“This book is changing the traffic patterns in the Los Angeles area,” said an enthusiastic Karen Perea, West Coast regional buyer for B. Dalton.

Even though Schwadel and Roberts held down expenses by publishing the book themselves, they say they don’t figure to make much money from “L.A. Shortcuts,” which retails for $14.95.

They wouldn’t disclose profits or expenses, but Roberts said about 14,500 copies have been sold. If their earnings have amounted to, say, 20% of retail receipts--about double the royalties they could have earned working with a conventional publisher--they have made a total profit of about $43,000 so far.

In one respect, the response from readers has been under-whelming. The authors put a page in the back of the book for readers to submit their own favorite shortcuts. So far, no more than 10 have come in.

“People are really protective of their shortcuts,” Roberts said. “People would rather give up their first-born child than a shortcut.”