To Short Or Not To Short?

The question I'm dealing with today is whether or not short-short's make sense for a career as a tool and as a product that people want to buy. From my experience I think short pieces from 2-6k words are invaluable as a way to introduce to people to your work. Their also great promotional tools on other websites and in print anthologies. Personally, I like them because they offer me a change of pace from my other longer works. But they also get me into print which is something that I wouldn't normally have access to because in this stage of my career I'm more focused on e-publishers than traditional NY.

So the benefits of a change of pace and cross promotion in several mediums work well for me. Though I know other people find the short range cheap and not worth their time as writing a full novel. There's an odd art to picking the perfect word knowing that you only have so many to work with--at least, that's what I think. What do you think? Do shorts benefit the readers? Are they helpful introductions or wastes of time?