The Perks of Being an International Reader

It's the end of the month and sharing my first discussion post of the year (I'm adding this post to both blogging challenges I joined: Blog All About It and 2019 Book Blog Discussion Challenge). I wrote this post a few weeks ago, but I've been editing my thesis like crazy in the past week (and then I lost myself in some new designs, but let's not talk about it) and only found time to share it with you today (as soon as this is done, I'm back to editing this damn thesis). Anyway, I'm a pessimist. Always have been, always will be (probably). More often than not, I find myself thinking about the negative side of an issue than about the positive one. Regarding reading, it's a fact that international readers (aka readers who do not live in English speaking countries) are in disadvantage - no pre-order swag, lack to no access to books, no physical ARCs, etc. However, I searched for the silver lining and today I'll be discussing the perks of being an international reader.

What the heck are you talking about? 

Tell me that I'm not the only who finds herself staring at her Twitter timeline without a clue of what is going every single morning. A good night of sleep means eight hours (maybe less because who needs to sleep eight hours when life is so chaotic and stressful?) away from the book world ant it gives it enough time to catch on fire. Two weeks ago there was a huge controversy in the book blogosphere (it seems authors accused bloggers of selling their ARCs and there was a great deal of passive-aggressive tweets) and still today I haven't figured out what started the whole discussion. How can not knowing about the drama be a perk? Does anyone actually loves drama? I read because the world can be a dark place. These situations are responsible by some of the darkness that you can find it. In the heat of the moment people say hurtful stuff - most don't actually mean saying those things, but they do. Different time zones can actually be a blessing.

Every little thing is magic! 

I'm not trying to take away no one's thunder (is this the expression?), but things that are taken for granted by US and UK readers are not granted for the rest of us. Many roads are closed to international readers - may it be join a blog tour, request an ARC or even walk to a bookshop and find that one book you have been wanting to read since you heard about it because the bookshop doesn't sell English books and it hasn't been translated yet (ninety percent of the books I read so far haven't been translated/published in my country). Every time a publisher reaches to us or allows us to request a book we love it's like seeing a fluffy unicorn.

Discovering new brilliant authors. 

Books are expensive (no Barnes & Noble nor Book Outlet). If we, international readers, want to read physical books, we must order them from Amazon or Book Depository (I'm aware that I'm in privileged position because many international readers can't even get physical books from these stores). Most times, I go myself ebooks. Going through the Kobo store in search of something to read means discovering new authors that are not featured in major bookshops. So, being an international reader means finding new stories - mostly because the books are cheap or even free - and support a wide-range of unknown authors. And, that means we're lucky to find hidden gems that no one else has heard about. Of course that also means we will be annoying people and shout about these books all the time until we find someone else to fangirl with, but that's acceptable. Right? RIGHT?!

Hype? What's "hype"? 

These days I'm more aware of the hype surrounding certain authors and books, but that's because of the number of UK and US bloggers I'm following on Twitter and Instagram. But that's not the point... What I'm trying to say is: we're not affected by the hype (much). First, international readers can't pre-order every single book that is being hyped because, as mentioned above, books are expensive, so we must be sure if a book is really up our alley. Secondly, many times I only find out a book was hyped years later after its release when I go to Goodreads and see how many people have read/reviewed it. We aren't influenced by the hype because we aren't being bombarded by the publisher's marketing - after all, we aren't the target audience. It actually saves us some money. And broken hearts.

Do you believe there are perks in being an international reader?
If so, please, share them with me in the comment section.

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