Publishing?

I remember my painting teacher in Hawaii sitting on his bench, eating Cheetos with chopsticks, instructing us students to always remember that you cannot paint abstractly until you have mastered the tools of the realistic realm.  In other words, you cannot break rules until you know what they are.  For a moment I'd like to apply that to publishing.

Let's be honest.  I am an undergraduate student with just one pending publication, and I don't know the first thing about the publishing world.  I've been working on gathering material to write my travel essays that I can self publish in an eBook, but it was not until I talked to my new friend, Emily, that I realized that this might make regular publishing impossible.  The conventional publishing world may be dying, but do grad schools care about that?  Or am I expected to have some traditional something to slap onto my resume if I want to be taken seriously?  (I hate that). 

In Dr. Burton's last email (my field study faculty mentor), he gave me some links to some popular places online where you can self publish eBooks.  I've decided to do a quick review of these sites and where I might go from here:

Smashwords.com publishes and distributes eBooks where authors and publishers retain full control over how their words and published, sampled, priced, and solid.  If an author wants to charge (the site is free), they have that option to do that, or even change the price at will.  They claim to be the leading eBook publishing platform, and have over 45,000 eBooks published.  If you do decide to charge, Smashwords.com keeps a portion of the profit, but it is still much more than the author would get in a traditional publishing relationship.  They also say that some publishers can sweep up these eBooks and show that they are worth selling, but others have decided that they do not want to work with a mainstream publisher or wait around as their book languishes in obscurity.  They say it is a personal choice, and that Smashwords.com does not publish incomplete or unpolished books.  

One thing that the FAQ section on Smashwords.com brought up was the challenges that the traditional publishing industry is facing.  It goes into detail, but the main points are that it makes publishing and books expensive, publishers have difficulty predicting demand for a book, it is a "hit" business, shelf space is limited, bookstores have short attention spans, new titles must compete against mid-list, there are tiny royalities, publishers don't promote most books, there is a limited geographic distribution and no "long tail" in print publishing.  Their final argument is that readers are left unserved.  I think this is all too true, but again, will the grad schools I am applying to recognize that, or is academia still clinging to traditional formats?  

Wattpad.com is another eBook publishing site I've been looking at.  What they are all about is a little harder and less explicit than Smashwords.com, but they say they are the "YouTube for eBooks."  Wattpad is social and mobile, and available for every major mobile device, and it is very much about connecting (which is an aim of my project).  Publishers are also taking advantage of Wattpad to promote new titles and re-ignite interest in established works.  They say it creates a more personal connecting with the authors and their readers, and it is used by many readers, specifically in the west.  They have a blog that I am now following. After browsing the website it also seems that less polished books are available- some even look like fragments of drafts, asking for feedback. 

Last is lulu.com.  They produce hardcover, paperback books, eBooks, mini books, photo books, calendars, cookbooks, etc, and advertise that creators keep 80% of the profits they set on their products.  They are growing by approximately 20,000 titles published per month, and have 1.1 million creators, even though they were founded as early as 2002.  They are all about open publishing, empowering creators to sell more content to more audiences.  Unlike smashwords.com, there is not a lot of background on the site or discussion in the realm of eBook publishing vs traditional publishing, but it looks like a good site. 

So can I skip the realistic painting classes and jump straight into surrealism or modern art?  I think that this is really a great way to get your work out there, considering that the paper publishing world is dying, and it is probably the best medium I have to publish my travel essays in.  I just wish I knew a little bit more about how others look at self publishing and eBooks, particularly those who will be hopefully admitting me to their university.

If anyone has any insights on this, I could really use some feedback.