When I was in journalism school, the job I wanted didn’t exist. I wanted to write about my passions for a wider audience, so I built my own career from scratch.

Almost every week, I get emails from students asking me how I got to do what I do and, more urgently, how can they do the same? It’s a tough question to answer, because journalism is changing so quickly. So I decided to write a book about it. I took everything I learned in four years of fandom reporting and poured it into 150 pages of my most potent advice. This is not a rehashing of the way I learned to be a journalist in school. This book is my prediction for the future of news.

Today I am announcing the Otaku Journalist e-course, my eight-part manual on how you can make writing about your passions into a career in journalism.

I’ll be releasing one chapter at a time every two weeks. By the end of this book, you’ll have learned how to:

• Build a personal reporting beat in a fan community

• Generate high quality story ideas fit to pitch to magazines

• Impress convention press liaisons into granting you a press badge

• Maximize your research and reporting opportunities at a con

• Reach out to people you admire for interviews with confidence

• Plan, conduct, and transcribe interviews with accuracy

• Build a professional online identity and personal brand as a reporter

• Pitch finished articles to publications as a freelance journalist

Better yet, I’m giving away the first chapter, Going from fan to pro, absolutely free. That’s a 14 page workbook—plus two worksheets—of my best advice, straight to your inbox. Just sign up for my newsletter to get a download link instantly.

Thank you for joining me on this new adventure!