In the old days - which, in this case, you might define as "two years ago" - getting your book published would entail finding an agent, sending it off to publishing houses like Random House or, when that failed, paying a vanity press to put the thing in print.

All of that has changed, thanks to radical shifts in the publishing industry and, oh yeah, the Internet.

Here are some examples of how a few Bay Area authors recently got into print:

Retired occupational therapist turned writer Francine Howard of El Cerrito had a short stack of unpublished manuscripts collecting dust while agents kept rejecting her queries. Then in January 2009, she entered her novel of interracial love in the Jim Crow South, "Page From a Tennessee Journal," in Amazon.com's Breakthrough Novel Award contest, whose top prize was a contract with Penguin Books.

She didn't win, but for making it to the second round, in a field of 6,500 hopefuls, her prize was two Amazon Vine (customer) reviews of a 5,000-word excerpt of her book. They were both raves, and that May, an editor from the Web site's then-week-old imprint called AmazonEncore called with an offer to publish her book. It came out last month.

Berkeley author Seth Harwood, who teaches writing and literature at Stanford University and City College of San Francisco, wrote his first book, the gritty crime novel "Jack Wakes Up," in 2005. He began posting 50-minute podcast episodes from it on Podiobooks.com in 2006, establishing a marketing platform for his work. He made a print-on-demand deal with Breakneck Books in March 2008, and then Three Rivers Press, an imprint of Random House, scooped him up and published the book in May 2009.

Petaluma author Ransom Stephens offered his first novel, a mix of particle physics, metaphysics and single parenthood titled "The God Patent," as an e-novel on the Web site Scribd, known as the YouTube of documents. It spent 15 weeks in the site's Top 10, and got picked up by boutique publisher Numina Press of San Rafael, which published the book in December. On his Web site, Ransom's Notes (www.ran somstephens.com), Stephens declares his book "the first debut bestseller to emerge from the new paradigm of publishing."

These are just three examples of alternative strategies that aspiring authors, aided by Internet technology, are devising to get their work to the public. In the process, they are creating publishing models to circumvent the traditional - some say broken - one.

"The model of agents and publishers as gatekeepers just isn't working anymore," says Harwood, who with fellow podcasting author Scott Sigler has taught Author Boot Camp seminars at Stanford, in which they show writers how to create a publishing platform the way they did.

"I had to do something because just writing letters to agents wasn't working. So I give people my work for free. After they've listened to my book, they know they'll like it. I've given away six books in audio form."

Harwood posted serialized podcasts of his second book, "Young Junius," which will be released in autumn by independent crime fiction publisher Tyrus Books. He devised an innovative marketing scheme for this title as well. In the first week of May, he announced on his Web site that he was offering a $35 special edition, and he says the orders came flooding in. A week later, he had earned enough to cover a third of the cost of the print run for the hardcover, paperback and special editions.

Other writers give their work a test ride on the free online literary magazine Narrative ( www.narrativemagazine.com), which holds a monthly story contest, or set up their own fan page on Facebook to post and publicize their unpublished or self-published books. Narrative is the brainchild of author Carol Edgarian and her husband, editor Tom Jenks.

"The old model was you had to go through an agent, then the editor and publisher, then the bookstore to get to fans," notes Harwood. "Now you can bypass all those gatekeepers and go straight to the fans online."

Naysayers insist that the problem with self-published books is that they are not subject to the same standards of quality that conventional publishing houses maintain when they weed out less qualified contenders and put manuscripts through a rigorous vetting and editing process.

"A weeding-out process has to happen," Harwood grants, "but you can let the fans do the weeding instead of the agents and publishers."

That's exactly what AmazonEncore has done, using its sophisticated tracking technology to identify self-published books that had good customer reviews but low sales, and finding promising unpublished works through its contest. Jeff Belle, vice president of worldwide media for Amazon.com, sees it as a winning formula.

"We've been very happy with the sales levels across the board so far," he says, declining to give sales figures for AmazonEncore books. "It helps, obviously, to have books that have already been very well received but haven't gotten the level of recognition that they deserve. One of the things we can help them do is reach that larger audience. I think it's great to start with content that's already been well vetted by our customers."

Belle says the company does not give authors an advance, "but we pay very competitive royalties." Further savings come with less editing and streamlined distribution. While the company distributes to brick-and-mortar bookstores in addition to selling on Amazon, it has print-on-demand capability and does not have the storage costs and volume of returns that eat into profit at conventional publishing houses.

"When you have set pricing and returns of 25 to 40 percent on some books, that's not a sustainable model," says Hut Landon, executive director of the Northern California Independent Booksellers Association. "The big publishers in New York are looking at all the new things people are trying and paying attention to them. But we still have to figure out the distribution piece of it."

Meanwhile, authors benefiting from new models are delighted.

"I think the publicity Amazon is giving to its authors far exceeds anything a debut author is going to get from a traditional publisher these days," says Howard. "That's why I'm so grateful there's a whole new mechanism for writers to get their work out there. I feel very fortunate."

Regan McMahon is an Oakland author and book critic. E-mail her at datebookletters@sfchronicle.com

This article appeared on page E - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle