Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

Smashwords, and other ePublishing outlets, have become the place to go. My income from Smashwords short stories is in the same order of magnitude as engineering management books from traditional publishers.

In early 2011, I put a few dozen short stories on Smashwords. I wrote those stories in 2008. I have written a dozen more since summer and put those online. Here is a previous post on the subject.

Time marches on, and guess what?

I’m making about as much money with the short stories as I am with engineering management books.

I have made about $250 this year with short stories. This is not a big number, but this is on par with the royalties from my engineering management books that were published on paper a couple of years ago. (See here for the good old books.)

Now what do I do? Some options:

1. do nothing
2. continue to write short stories for Smashwords and leave engineering management alone
3. start writing engineering management topics for Smashwords
4. write short stories and engineering management topics  for Smashwords

Option 1 is the easiest. Well, really it isn’t. I think I would go crazy if I did nothing for more than a few days. Option 3 is the biggest change. Hence, it is unlikely. Option 2 is fine, but boring. That leaves option 4, and I guess that is what I will do in the coming months, unless a movie producer loves one of my short stories and pays me a million dollars for the movie rights (possible, but not probable).