Armchair Book Expo 2017 – Day 2: What Do Readers Want and Let's Collaborate & Listen #ArmchairBookExpo #whatreaderswant #collaborate

Armchair Book Expo is the experience for book bloggers to participate in Book Expo from the comfort of their homes. This experience is created lovingly by book bloggers specifically for our peers who for whatever reason are not able to participate in the main conference in New York each year. We bring publishers, authors, and bloggers together in celebrating our love for all things literary by hosting celebrations such as sneak peeks, daily discussion topics, and sponsored giveaways. 

What Do Readers Want?: What makes or breaks a book? How do we rate the books, or determine if it is good literature or a good story? What do we want from an author event? How does diversity representation fit into all of this? 

For me, what makes or breaks a book is how engaged I am. When something is tough for me to put down, it gets a higher rating. Whether or not I like the characters is irrelevant. I don't have to like them to enjoy the story. Evil characters are sometimes the best! When I am reading YA, the content has to be age-appropriate and something that I would feel comfortable letting my teenager read. I get really irked when an author or publisher passes off a book as YA simply because the main character is a teenager, when it really should be marketed to adults. 

If a book is un-put-downable and I loved it, then I give it five stars. When I really enjoyed the story but it didn't give me the "love it" feeling, then I give 4 stars. If I liked it and enjoyed it but wasn't WOWed in any way, then I give 3 stars. If it's just "meh", then I give 2 stars. If I didn't like the story at all or it just wasn't for me, then I give only 1 star. I never mark a book as DNF. I feel obligated to finish it, even if I am not liking it!

Let's Collaborate & Listen: The online book community has changed so much over the years. How do we keep up within our own book-sphere as well as within the community as a whole (i.e., libraries, bookstores, authors, publishers, etc.)? 

Way back when I first started blogging, there was a great site called Book Blogs NING. It was a great way to meet other bloggers and share reviews. I do miss that community of passionate readers, but I enjoy talking about books with other fans/bloggers over at Goodreads. I participate in different weekly memes on a regular basis, so I find out about new books from other bloggers. I'm also a big fan of utilizing my local public library, and I am there each week checking out the New Release shelves. My local branch is small, so I frequently use the inter-library loan service. My library's branch manager told me that I single-handledly have increased the circulation at their branch and that I must never move out of the area :)  I don't generally request ARCs from NetGalley or Edelweiss because I don't enjoy reading e-books, but I love using Edelweiss to view publisher catalogs. I keep track of upcoming releases on Goodreads and add them to my Wishlist. When I post reviews on my blog, I tweet the link to publishers and authors so that they can view it if they wish.