Emily Schultz has taken Stephen King as her guide as she spends an unexpected windfall from her novel Joyland. But how could the master of horror help with your decision-making?

"Would Stephen King Like It?" That's the question author Emily Schultz has been asking, as she spends the unexpected money which landed in her account after fans of King mistakenly bought the ebook version of her 2006 novel Joyland, thinking it was the digital version of King's novel of the same name. King published his own Joyland last year, but only in print.

Some don't seem to have realised – even after purchase – that the book was not by King, and left her bad reviews on Amazon: "Not up to Steven King standards. Boring and boring. No suspense. The characters were interesting, but not exciting. Did not like the ending." Others approved of King's change of pace: "Probably one of the best books written by Stephen King. Not the usual King story but instead a warm wonderful story of a young man crossing into adulthood and the things he learned."

Schultz tried to get Amazon to "change their search results to keep people from buying the wrong book but never heard back, she blogs. And she's recently discovered that there were apparently "a lot of confused readers", as she's just received a big royalty payment for the mistaken books.

"I'm not so upset anymore. Sure, it's more a pleasant surprise than a fortune, and I'm stuck with those reviews, but I thought a blog detailing how we're spending the Stephen King money would be a nice way to end this funny and strange story," she writes.

So, she bought "various Ikea items" for $94.70, and asks "Would Stephen King Like It? Yes, probably. "Ikea is just waiting to be used as a perfectly uncanny and terrifying setting." She spends $200 on repairing her car's bumpers, noting "the cause of the damage is somewhat mysterious. We think it happened during garbage removal." Would King like it? "Cars, mysterious garbagemen, feelings of vengeance—of course he would!"

King has now responded to the mix-up, telling Entertainment Weekly "I'm delighted for her, and I'm going to order her book". King, writes Schultz on Twitter, is "wonderful".

I'm not sure what, if anything, we can learn from this whole affair, but I'm definitely going to start applying Schultz's question, slightly doctored, to issues in my own life. Lying heavy on my mind today is whether I should bother to mow the grass this weekend, or let the dandelions continue to colonise. What would Stephen King do? Well, lawnmowers aren't the safest of machines – I think he'd tell me to leave it be. Just what I wanted to hear …