dselect update with local archive gives "Failed to fetch"

[Larry Evans <jcampbell3@prodigy.net>]

Following directions in

> http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/apt-howto/ch-basico.en.html#s-sources.list

and after downloading serveral .deb files to /root/debs, I tried dselect 
and did
access apt and then update; however, I got several error messages like:

 Err file: stable/main Packages File not found
  ...
 Failed to fetch file: 
/root/debs/dists/stable/main/binary-i386/Packages File not found

the /root/debs did not contain any subdirectories because I saw no 
instructions for
how the .debs file should be arranged in subdirectories.  Are there any
such instructions that I can follow to avoid the above errors in dselect?