Romance novels are hugely popular, but those depicting interracial relationships are not quite so highly sought-after. Within that preciously small non-sub-genre are those that feature Asian men and black women as romantic leads. Why is this?
That’s what Aminka Ozmun was wondering, and the former model is now just finishing up her first romance novels, all of which feature black women-Asian men relationships. Industry observers have been taken by her idealistic pluck, since the market for such works is so small any effort may be considered more fan fiction than anything else.
Being a good sport, Ms. Ozmun was gracious enough to entertain such barbed-wired cross-examinations during our interview on her art, during which she revealed that romance novels were just the beginning of her plans. Her sunny disposition combined with a refreshing candor that resulted in an incredibly disarming interview in which we were almost convinced that she might just pull it all off.
Not.
Sorry to break it to ya, kiddo, but it takes more than just a good storyline to make it in publishing (oh, didn’t you know; she’s self-publishing, at that). It takes a market. In other words, romance is a business.
She’s simply selling to a non-existent market, the equivalent of opening a lemonade stand on the moon, hoping that NASA will catch up with her! While such entrepreneurial aplomb is commendable in some respects, for her personally it will be an unmitigated disaster.
That’s right, you heard it here first. We predict that Aminka Ozmun romances will wither by the wayside not just because of an already crowded marketspace for such sentimentality but more so because she’s chasing a niche within a niche: Readers do not generally go for interracial romances, and those who do are looking for white or black male leads, not Asian ones — not very many, we are sad to say if we don’t say so ourselves.
Of course, to hear her tell it, that’s precisely the point of her endeavors, to put such couplings on the cultural menu of mainstream tastes. But there isn’t any interest anyhow; might as well stick a stick in the ground alongside Interstate-99 or some such stretch of road and hope the traffic busily whizzing by notices — never mind cares.
Now we do wish her well and hope to be proved wrong but it simply isn’t likely that one person is going to not only create a whole niche on her own but put it in front of people and have them care on top of everything else. She’s asking for too much. But then again, that’s what writers do, isn’t it: Dream. And in that regard her works promise to be quite imaginative, whatever their ultimate commercial viability.
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