This paper aims to present the development strategy of the ontology proposed in the READ-IT project (https://readit-project.eu) and the contributions it makes to the conceptual description of reading experiences and, more broadly, to the description of intangible heritage and other "experiential" phenomena. Its development relied on a data-driven approach with the active participation of a representative panel of reading experts from HSS disciplines. The process was iterative to converge towards a consensus balancing ICT requirements and HSS scholar needs. In this regard, we will focus on the general framework and the way in which both alignments of CIDOC CRM (and some of its extensions) with READ-IT’s data model and creations of classes have been carried out, as well as the benefits derived from a pragmatic and cost-efficient approach, allowing us to offer REO as an extension of CIDOC CRM, which will guarantee its reusability, improvement and maintenance over time.