Sandwich Smash

Romance novels — the world’s full of them.  A cornucopia of cowboys, race car drivers, jet fighter pilots, and of course rich businessmen.  Married or single, black or white, a variety of situations exist…take your pick.  It’s all the same, really.  Just porn for women, and about as brain-dead oftentimes.  Frankly, there’s more “romance” in the world than there is actual love!

It might follow, then, that writing romance novels should be about as easy as, well, faking an orgasm.  But as any writer can tell you, it’s not.  It may be in some sense easier than creating a “real” work of “art” but it’s not easy as such, no.  I speak from personal experience.  I’m currently trying to write one, with plans to make this a career of sorts for at least the next two years.  Ideally, I’d have three lines of twenty-four titles available in each: some seventy-two novels altogether!  And why?

Because I’m trying to cash in on the eBook self-publishing craze, to be honest, and I’ve identified romance novels as the best bet going.  But I’m not just going to put another girl-meets-boy/loves-boy/loses-boy/finds-boy-again-and-lives-happily-ever-after story out there, even if I am writing under a pen name — I am a guy, moreover (but that’s another discussion), and a guy must have some standards, after all!

No, despite my “mercantilist” motivations, I do want to “add to the conversation,” as it were, all the same, and hence make actual contributions, contributions to the genre.  Hence I’ve identified a niche market for romance fiction: black women — specifically, black women who are interested in Asian men!

But as exciting as that sounds (to me, anyway), it’s still a lot of work, and much of that work comes from the fact that I don’t read romances (‘member, I’m a guy) and have no interest in reading them.  None whatsoever.  Zilch.  Zero!  Yet how do I expect to write one, never mind actually sell them??

It’s an odd proposition, to be sure — as odd as black women and Asian men unions, ya think? — but I feel confident about it.  I’m not sure how much money I’d ever make, but I really believe that there is a need for this kind of fiction out there, a rather big need, and a mostly unfulfilled need.  Moreover, I love black women.  Okay, I love all women (I’m a guy!), but it seems that most guys have no love for black women in this culture, and I absolutely adore them for their unique looks.  I think I can translate this love into romances that are both different and interesting — as intensely interesting as my interests in black women are intense!

But it’s hard, and wanting to be different, to tell stories that are identifiably romantic without getting into the brain-dead territory of porn (after all, romances are just porn for women, if you think about it), makes things even harder.  With all due respect to Harlequin titles, from which I could certainly learn quite a few things, I’m sure, I don’t want to put out Harlequins (except where brand-recognition success is concerned, at least!)…I want to add to the conversation, as I’ve said, said convo here being romantic relations — between black women and Asian men.

Author Aminka Ozmun is passionate about BWAM romance novels — and for that reason, she is determined to make them different.  ”They have to be different,” she says, “or else it wouldn’t make any sense.  I don’t think readers want a typical romance, only with slightly ethnic characters.  By the same token, these are romances, not sociological studies or political tracts.  So they ‘re going to be a different kind of romance than anything the industry has ever seen — and that’s a good thing for black women interested in relationships with Asian men.”

I began to think about writing my own romance novels in response to the lack of BWAM representation in this business.  Granted, black folk constitute a minority of the general population in the United States and there are even fewer Americans that are of Asian heritage, but the near absolute dearth of romantic fiction involving BWAM couples literally forced my hand!  In a situation recalling the old advice “can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” I decided that if I couldn’t find any such stories I’d write my own to share with others like myself.

Happily, some titles dealing with BWAM protagonists do exist in the category of what’s usually called literary fiction in the trade but these aren’t generally romance novels per se.  But as I started writing I came upon a challenge that may have bedeviled others before me: romantic relationships between black women and Asian men are, it seems, necessarily special — and thus subject to different reader expectations, which means a different treatment.  You see, I couldn’t just write the typical “boddice-ripper” because of the reality of race relations in this country, past and present, even if the genre is all about fantasy.

So it’s a delicate performance a BWAM storyteller must put in, to entertain while also exploring new territory.  And because it’s new territory, a BWAM romance is going to be, by definition, something different.  All the hot and heavy sensuality, if not outright sex, is still going to be there, but the backdrop can’t be simply taken for granted.  The interracial angle has to play a part.  But what, exactly?

That’s the challenge.  And with a handful of titles under my belt now, I can say that the solution for me is to trust each and every story, and its characters, to take things where they may, to let matters develop “organically.”  This isn’t something that can be outlined, exactly.  Such issues require sensitivity above all: an ear for what works, for what is seemly.  I have not received any negative reader feedback so far about possibly overplaying the “race card,” and that is encouraging.

It’s tough to be different.  It’s a lot of work.  But I feel like this is also a lot of fun, exploring what it means — if anything! — to be a BWAM couple, even in the fantasy world of romantic novels.  And my feminine intuition tells me that the black women who are interested in Asian men are different themselves, and would not want to read regurgitated woman-meets-man stories dressed up in yellow and blackface!

It’s 2012.  Even if the world doesn’t end this year, are SEO copywriting services still necessary for your website to rank highly?  This may seem like a nonsensical question but given how tight money continues to be due to the economy, it makes sense to go over every line item of your balance sheet and scrutinize the hell out of every expense listed!

But you probably know all that.  As a businessman or woman, your first instinct is to cut, cut, cut — and like most businesspeople, advertising and marketing will present the most obvious first choice.  So is all that professional SEO copywriting truly needed, or can you just hire some “keyboard monkey” to “spin” private-label articles ad infinitum using software algorithms?  (Is that, in fact, what you have been doing all along, even??)

Well, let me argue against that keyboard-monkey spinning method of online promotions.  Being in business myself — full disclosure: I run the website the hyperlinks in this article refer to, where expert copywriting services from someone actually in the industry are offered — I know how tempting it is to focus on sales and, even, customer service before spending a dime on marketing and promotion.  But if you’re first and foremost an online business, you absolutely need SEO copywriting no matter what — it’s the lifeblood of e-commerce today, for there is almost no other way for customers to find you.  Unlike a traditional brick-and-mortar storefront offline, people won’t simply happen to notice your store on their way to work or school.  On the worldwide web, it’s all about the search engines!  And search engines are about text.  Relevant copy.  SEO-written by an industry professional.

Not keyboard monkeys, some student making bong-party money by regurgitating stuff already online, only spinning it every which way so it appears “unique” to the search engines — which, being but software running on the same algorithms, are easily fooled.  But is that truly how you want to represent your business?  Let’s take this article for an example.  As mentioned, the hyperlinks here refer to my own professional copywriting services business.  Now I could have grabbed some text off the web, too, and feed it through spinner software that will produce very vaguely English sentences and paragraphs that, while nonsensical, look good enough to a search engine’s website indexing software.  It would have saved me a lot of time writing this article.  But would it have helped you in learning about how important proper marketing is?

If you use doctored copy like that, just imagine the negative impression of your business that’s created when an actual person happens upon such a piece of non-writing!  What would you have thought about my business had this article been similar gobbledygook?

That’s why I took the time to write, and that’s why you should avail yourself of copywriting services like what I provide.  First impressions are lasting impressions – don’t ruin your chance at increased sales and profits by using anyone other than a real copywriter!  In my case, I’m a professional with years and years of experience working on behalf of companies that run the gamut from small neighborhood mom-and-pop operations to international concerns with half a billion dollars in annual revenue.  And with this economy being what it continues to be, my prices are incredibly low.  Hire me and you’ll get Madison Avenue quality at Main Street prices!  But whatever you do, do it with a professional — for the sake of your business, for the sake of your success.  Don’t skimp on “the message.”  Tell the world about your business the right way!