J.A. Konrath is now, like Amanda Hocking, one of my new heroes. I've been reading his blog after learning that Amanda Hocking was actually inspired by him when she decided to indie publish directly to Kindle. Although Joe isn't quite as successful as Amanda (he hasn't yet sold a million... only a paltry 600 000... cough) he just made $100 000 dollars in the last three weeks. 
Oh.
My.
GOD! 
As he writes, it's time to pinch yourself. Could these numbers be real? Well, he put a screenshot up on his blog and, as you can see, he sold over 10 000 copies of his book, The List, in just the first 11 days of January. In comparison, I sold 13 copies of Post-Human over the same time period. Um. Yeah.
On January 11th, his book was number 75 paid in the Kindle store, so I now see that it requires approximately 1000 sales of a book in a day to crack the top 100... my record for all 3 books in one day is 8. 
Joe is my hero. 
I want 2012 to be my year. Here's my plan:
I'm working hard on my next ebook, which will be the first book that I publish directly to Kindle. As Joe advises his many blog readers, I'm experimenting with this one and writing something a little different than I have in the past. Rather than locking myself into one genre forever, I'm going to try different genres and see what works. The book I am feverishly hammering away at right now is a near future dystopia with vampires and zombies... that's right... vampires and zombies. And while I know many of my readers really, really didn't want me to write it, and even I had my reservations, I'm 1/3 into it now and, I have to say, it is really, really damn fun. I'm glad I wrote it. It might be a failure of galactic proportions, hated by the world, but at least I can say I tried. 
In all seriousness though, it's going to be a very good book and I'll be proud to have it as part of my catalogue. When I am finished with it, I am on to the next one, and the next one, and the next one.
My goal is to have four more books published directly to Kindle by 2012 and to keep trying to grow my readership. I have a small goal of selling over 2000 books by the end of the year. If I accomplish that, I will consider it to be pretty much just treading water, but I will also be satisfied that, slowly but surely, I am reaching an audience. My reviews have been excellent, especially lately, and I am not going to give up.
So... what's your plan for 2012?