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Kevin Kubota Expert PageANNOUNCER: This VTalk Radio's Spotlight is sponsored by morephotos.com the online photo sales solution to professional photographers worldwide. Welcome to the VTalk Radio's Photographer Spotlight with your host, John Bentley.
JOHN: Today we are in the studio with Kevin Kabota of Asuka Books of Bend, Oregon, and you're listening to VTalk Radio's Photography Spotlight. Welcome to the program, Kevin.
KEVIN: Thank you very much. Thanks for having me on.
JOHN: Yeah. Let's tell our listening audience what is Asuka Books?
KEVIN: Well Asuka Books is a coffee table style...we call it an album, but it's really generally designed for photographers to display their work, but it's a coffee style book similar to what you would pick up in bookstore; like a fine art coffee table book. The great thing about it is photographers can again print either 1 or 100 copies...whatever they need and then use them for resale for their clients as an album alternative.
JOHN: Now you're servicing professional photographers in the U.S. or around the world?
KEVIN: Primarily the U.S., but we actually are worldwide. We have clients all over the world. We do have also distributors in several key countries and in most of Asia and western Europe and Australia. Other than that, everybody else comes through us. We do have clients in other countries that order our books through our U.S. office. The book's actually printed and bound in Japan, and then we handle everything from our Oregon location for distribution.
JOHN: Tell us how long Asuka Books has been in business?
KEVIN: They've been in business, well I'll start with our U.S. branch of Asuka Books, has been in business a little over two years. The company itself in Japan, the parent company, has been in business over ten years producing these books for photographers in Japan so the production of the book and the making of the book has been around quite a while, but it's fairly new to the United States and the European markets which we're starting to serve now.
JOHN: Now are there different styles of Asuka Books?
KEVIN: Oh yeah. There are all kinds of styles and sizes ranging from nice little, we call them purse size books or 5x5, and they can have them with printed on slip covers, and they range from 5x5, 7x7, 8x8, 10x10s, we have vertical format 10x12 1/2. We have some new lines of leather covered and animal friendly faux leather covered books. They come with nice presentation boxes and beautiful slip covers. The presentation is really a big part of the book and it's typical I think of Japanese style of showing their product that they have the presentation be very important so the outsight cover and the block that they come in are very cool; very nice thing to give your client.
JOHN: Now, a photographer then can order any number of styles of books from you guys to present to their clients. What is the range in which your books can hold photographs?
KEVIN: Well they range in size from about twelve pages up to 80 pages currently. We are looking to expand the size so you have a kind of a set number of pages and the photographer designs in Photoshop any way they want or they're using various album design software. So they can essentially put as many pictures as they want to cram in there if they want to do that, or they can put one image per page, but the layout is completely left up to the photographer. So it's very flexible as far as how they want it to you look and how many images they want in there.
JOHN: How long have you been working with Asuka Books, Kevin?
KEVIN: Since we started in the U.S. I actually founded the U.S. office which was a little over 2 1/2 years ago. They came from Japan looking for a distributor or a rep to handle all of the U.S. operations, and we had a meeting and from that meeting, I decided I would take on the project, and it's grown tremendously since then. We've had great success partly due to I think we have wonderful customer service, and we have a wonderful product so I think the product is a strong part of that.
JOHN: Now we are in the studio with Kevin Kabota of Asuka Books of Bend, Oregon, and you're listening to VTalk Radio's Photography Spotlight. We're going to step aside these important messages, we'll be right back.
ANNOUNCER: This VTalk Radio Spotlight is sponsored by morephotos.com, the online photo sales solution to professional photographers worldwide.
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ANNOUNCER: We now return you to the VTalk Radio's Photography Spotlight with your host, John Bentley.
JOHN: We are back in the studio with Kevin Kabota of Asuka Books of Bend, Oregon, and you're listening to VTalk Radio's Photography Spotlight. Welcome back to the program, Kevin.
KEVIN: Hello. Thank you.
JOHN: Now we've been talking about the digital photo books that you offer as a product to professional photographers around the world, and a question I have about you're table books, coffee table books, if you will, do they have the option of having it bound or a spiral book? Do you have a variety of those kinds of books available?
KEVIN: Well there's basically two types that we offer right now. There's a what's called a book bound which is a pretty typical type of perfect binding that you'd see in a bookstore, and we also have a stitch bound which is saddle stitched down the middle. Those are available on the books with lower page counts and that allows the book to lay flat when you open it up, but it doesn't look quiet as nice as the regular perfect binding. We don't do a spiral binding, it's really just focused on the coffee table look.
JOHN: Now do you have something small enough that perhaps my wife would like to put in her purse? Anything like that available?
KEVIN: One of our popular books for portfolios or promotional pieces is the 5x5 book which we really bill it as a pocket book album, and it can be a duplicate. A lot of times our customers will order a larger book...a 10x10 for example as their main album and then order a duplicate in the 5x5 size maybe 1, 2, 3, 5 copies of that which they'll give their clients to give to their parents or mother-in-law or anybody else who wants to carry one around and show it off. It's great for baby books too. Photographers who shoot babies and babies and families and kid's photography love those little books.
JOHN: Sure. Now what's the latest thing at Asuka books right now?
KEVIN: The latest thing is what we call the EX and the FLX which are the leather and the EX has a printed slip cover so all of the hard covers of our books are printed which is one of the unique things about it. It's a beautiful printed cover. We also offer them now with a slip cover which is more like a traditional bookstore book that's printed as well, and they also come in a nice presentation box. And the latest thing then is the leather cover so it's not printed, it's just a nice classic, clean leather cover which we've had a lot of requests for over the past...well since we started. People wanted a more traditional looking album type cover so it's not something that's going to look like what you get in a book store, but it does give it a cover that looks more traditional album, and it's a really beautiful leather that we use. And we also have an animal friendly faux leather version for those who don't want to use real leather and it's actually a pretty phenominal material, because most people can't tell the different between that and the actual real leather product.
JOHN: Now before I let you go today, Kevin, will you kindly share your website and contact information with our listening audience?
KEVIN: Sure. It's www.asukabook.com and that's A-S-U-K-A-B-O-O-K.com
JOHN: And we've been in the studio with Kevin Kabota of Asuka Books of Bend, Oregon. I want to thank you for joining us today, Kevin.
KEVIN: Thank you. Thanks for having me.
JOHN: You've been listening to VTalk Radio's Photography Spotlight. Thanks for joining us today. Have a great afternoon.
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