new birdHi gang!

At the start of each year, I always like to check in with everyone about the state of the blog and things to come for the year.

First off, I have so many thank you’s for all the folks who work so hard to make it a success here. I couldn’t even begin to have a blog of this size without the help of my amazing reviewers. I am not sure anyone can begin to imagine how much of their time they dedicate to reading books and writing reviews, often on a crazy tight schedule and all while balancing their own lives. I am always so overwhelmed by the amount of time and effort they put in to helping things run here. So a HUGE thank you to Michelle, Kris, Kirsty, Sammy, Kenna, Veronica, Sue, and Camille. And of course to the folks who have come and gone over the years, each of whom has made a stamp on Joyfully Jay.

I also want to thank all the authors to take the time to stop by the blog and share their giveaways and chat about books. And especially the authors and publishers who make their books available to us to review.

And of course, biggest thanks to you guys, the readers. There would be little point in all of this without you all here to stop by and read the reviews and share their thoughts. I love this little community and I appreciate every comment and every time you come and check out our reviews. So big thanks to everyone!

Just for fun, I checked out some site stats for the year. As some of you may remember, a few months ago we celebrated our FIVE YEAR anniversary here, which still blows me away. Not only that, but we reached 6,000 posts and over 2 million hits since March 2013. And in 2016, we published over 1400 posts! So things have been super busy here and I hope they stay that way!

So, what to expect for 2017? Well, the first big thing that will be coming around is our next theme week. We hold these annually and spend a week celebrating a particular theme or genre. They are a week full of reviews, guest posts, and a super big giveaway (the past few years we had over 100 prizes to give away). You can check out past theme weeks here if you want to get a feel for the event or check out the reviews. So the first order of business in the next week or two will be thinking about our theme for this year. If anyone has any ideas, please feel free to post in the comments or share them with me directly.

I have a couple of other ideas for features and events here that I am still ironing out, but I will share them with you all as soon as I know more. And based on the past two years’ success for our Reading Challenge Month, we tentatively have that planned again for September.

Anyway, that is a quick roundup of the past year and some thoughts on 2017. If you all have any ideas, suggestions, feedback, or even complaints, I would love to hear your thoughts. Again, feel free to comment here or shoot me an email.

Thanks! And Happy New Year!

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