I know guest posts are a bit of a rarity on this site, but I wanted to take a quick moment to let you know about my colleague Lauren Orsini’s new book, Otaku Journalism, that just launched today on Kindle! Lauren is a skilled writer and her enthusiasm for reporting on geeky topics is absolutely infectious. I’m already a few chapters into reading her new book and love it, so I highly recommend you grab a copy today! Here’s a post from Lauren talking a bit more about the project:

Hi, Nathan’s readers! It’s fellow journalist and blogger Lauren Orsini here.

Starting today, I have joined the ranks of journalists self-publishing books on journalism! My book, Otaku Journalism: A Guide to Geek Reporting in the Digital Age, is more about fandom reporting than games journalism.

In fact, I’m pretty sure it’s the only journalism textbook that deals with the new media challenges today’s plugged-in reporters face when writing about geek culture topics on the Web.

When I was first introduced to Nathan last year, my exact words were, “This guy is so awesome!” Like me, Nathan is a self made journalist who works mostly online. But rather than pull the ladder up behind him once he achieved success, he decided to write a guide outlining just how other people can build their careers the same way he did.

I was in the midst of writing Otaku Journalism when I first read Up Up Down Down Left WRITE, and I knew that I wanted to do the same service for my fellow fans, geeks and subculture enthusiasts that Nathan did for aspiring games journalists.

I wouldn’t call Nathan my competitor though. He’s been supportive of me every step of the way as I struggled through the trials of self-publishing for the first time. Just like his book does for aspiring journalists, he did for me—he knows there’s not a finite amount of success, and there’s room for lots of people up there at the top.

And it’s true. Nathan and I are both professionals. We both wrote niche journalism guidebooks. But reading both our books one after the next, you’ll find that there is no single way to become a successful career journalist. I hope that aspiring journalists can find at least some of the inspiration they require in our stories. And maybe after that, they’ll write their own relevant textbooks for every flavor of journalism.

Lauren Orsini is a professional journalist and blogger. She thinks being an otaku and being a journalist are two great tastes that go great together, and wants to recruit other geeks to find their passion for writing, too. Orsini currently writes about emerging technologies for ReadWrite. Her book, Otaku Journalism, is on sale in the Kindle store starting today.