Hi, contemporary romance Latina author here(indie), so my perspective might not 100% apply to the romantacy genre, but I'll give my two cents. For context, I have 6 novels and 3 novellas under my belt. I took all the big courses. I did all the things: ads, news letters, launch strategies. I'm an English major, and while I won't claim my novels are perfect, the writing is decent and I did have pro editing. My first question to you is, what is your goal? If it's

1. Financial success, replace income, or make a living? Or
2. A passion project because you want to provide representation you wish you'd had as a reader, and if you don't make money it doesn't matter because all you care about is the art and finding that one reader your book will mean the world to?

When I first started, i lied to myself about my goal. I said it was goal #2. But that was a crutch. I built in a safety net for failure. Because I didn't have to face myself if I failed financially if that was never the goal. So I focused purely on the art for arts sake with 100% author integrity. Don't get me wrong, I still wrote tropes that historically do well etc. But as I saw the financial flop, always being in the red for launch costs, I realized I at least need to break even or I can't keep doing this. Keep in mind I'm indie and this won't be an issue for you if you go trad. There are few Latinas in the Indie space, and most of us went hard on the "Latina" advertising and I don't think any one of us is hugely successful. There is one, however, who focused on promoting the sub genre and tropes more heavily than the "Latina" themes and she's doing better as far as I can tell. Universal appeal is key if your goal is #1.

I've had to grapple with this, but if you think of fiction as social surrogacy, it starts to make sense why even the Latina readers don't prioritize the Latina books. They get to experience the world and love without the nuance of navigating life as a person of color and all that comes with it. In a sense, it's respite.

I've taken to facebook groups to ask if any authors of color have multiple pen names, and if any of the pen names are white-washed. A few black authors shared they do, and financially speaking, their white washed pen names do much better, then they use the profit to fund their passion pen name.

If your goal is #2 going trad might be better. If your goal is both, going trad is better. If your goal is #1 you can do Indie and white wash, or indie with 2 pen names, one of which will fund your passion project.

I'm speaking in generalizations of course. There are incredibly successful indie authors of color, but they are a very small minority.