- Picture books customized in various ways to suit children can be produced and purchased online.
- The finished picture book is the only one in the world in which children play the leading roles.
- This service was realized by establishing a fully automated system from order to delivery.
The "Personalized Picture Book "BÜKI"" introduced here is a service that creates the world's one and only original picture book for children. For example, to celebrate a birthday, a user can enter the child's birthday and order online a beautiful picture book depicting animals related to constellations and the night sky on the day of the child's birth. This service won the grand prize in the "BabyTech® Award Japan 2021 Commemoration and Recording Category. Therefore, the BabyTech.jp editorial staff visited STUDIO BUKI Corporation, the developer of "BÜKI
We interviewed Fukumi Kozlov, CEO (titles below omitted), to get an overview of the service, how it was developed, and its future development.
(We spoke to...)
STUDIO BUKI Corporation CEO
Mr. Kozlov Fukumi
A picture book customized for the child is created in real time on the Internet!
Editorial:Thank you very much for your time today. Could you begin by giving us an overview of BÜKI and its features?
Kozlov:BÜKI" is a personalized picture book that allows children to become the hero of the story. By entering the child's name and birthday on our website, a picture book in which the child becomes the hero of the story is created. Furthermore, while trying out the book on the website, you can customize it in various ways, such as adding a message or photo to each page. In this way, our service allows you to create and purchase a one-of-a-kind picture book.
Editorial:You can try out all the pages of the picture book as you make it!
Kozlov:Customization, such as changing the message, is reflected on the spot, so you can see a finished version of every page before you purchase the book. BÜKI is a picture book service that allows you to create your own original picture book, but most of them only include the child's name in a few places, such as the name of the main character or the title of the book. The immersion in the picture book is very different because it reflects real information.
Editorial:When you tried to make a BÜKI (boookie) as a trial, the reason there were fields for entering various information was to reflect that information in the picture book.
Kozlov:For example, suppose your child's birthday is August 26. In the case of a birthday-themed picture book, the background would be illustrated in summer because the season of birth is summer. The story begins the day before the birthday, with various characters baking a cake and handing out birthday party invitations, but these characters can be changed to "dinosaurs" or "animals" to suit the child's preferences. There is also a picture book called ...... that determines the star sign from the birthday and is guided by the character of that sign. One particularly popular customization is a scene at the end of one of our picture books in which the characters look up at the starry sky. The starry sky is recreated from open source data of the actual starry sky as seen from the child's birth date, birth time, and birth location. In other picture books, the illustrations depicting the scene at the time of the child's birth change to night or morning, depending on the time of day.
Editorial:It's amazing! I think the originality of the book, a picture book made just for you, is a step above.
Kozlov:In general, picture books with a family theme usually feature a mom and dad. However, in BÜKI, you can choose "Single Dad," "Single Mom," "Dad & Dad," or "Mom & Mom. So, for example, a child growing up in a family with a single mother might have felt that a conventional picture book would be a little different from her own family ......, but BÜKI allows you to customize it to that extent.
Editorial:So you can reflect family structures that are not the majority in society. Where did that idea come from?
Kozlov:When I was talking about picture books with a friend who actually grew up in a family with a single mother, she once said to me, "Picture books with a family theme like this usually have both a father and a mother. Those words stuck with me for a long time. That made me think that the value of the picture books we make, which are printed one at a time, and which cannot be achieved by the thousands or tens of thousands of picture books printed at once in bookstores, is the ability to be close to such minor thoughts and feelings. The idea behind the idea was that making picture books for each individual, which had been made for the majority, was not only to customize them, but also to be close to those who are not in the mainstream.
Cross-border development teams create a completely new picture book production system.
Editorial:Can you tell us how you developed BÜKI?
Kozlov:We started selling the product at the end of December 2020. Before that, there was about a year of planning and development. When I was a child, whenever I read a picture book, I would enter the story and become the main character, slaying dragons, climbing big beanstalks, and I loved to fantasize about such things. However, as I grew up, the real me could not use such super powers, nor did I have aristocratic parents, nor could I talk to animals. The memory of thinking that those who could be the heroes of such picture books were special beings, and I couldn't be because I was an ordinary person...... remained somewhere in my mind for a long time.
It wasn't until I gave birth to my son in 2018 that I remembered that memory vividly. Looking at my son, I see that he still has no boundary at all between fantasy and reality and probably thinks he can do anything. He probably thinks he can fly. I didn't want such a son to think that his real self couldn't fly or that he wasn't that special ......, and the memory of my old self came back to me. At that time, I thought it would be wonderful if I could create a picture book in which I could be the main character. I told my husband about the idea, and his friends who were interested in doing something together, including a childhood friend of his who lives overseas, got on board. After about a year of work, we released the first book at the end of 2020.
Editorial:Thank you. Being overseas, do you feel that the development was done online?
Kozlov:Yes, that's right. We have a team of 9 people, but only one other person is Japanese, and the rest are foreign nationals. In addition, six of the nine of us live overseas.
Editorial:So you can order and do everything on the web, so that's why borders don't matter anymore.
Kozlov:I have no problem with that at all. We believe that our strength lies in our ability to combine the best of picture books with technology. Not only can the customer try out the book online, but when the book is actually printed and bound after the customer purchases it, our system automatically creates a print file with different content for each customer's book. This is then automatically transferred to the printing company, printed and bound at the printing company's plant, and packaged for delivery. So, while everything is made to order, our great strength is that the entire manufacturing process is automated. This is the strength of our development team.
Editorial:It's just like baby tech. ......
Kozlov:It really is tech. I think picture books in Japan have an image of being far away from tech, but our company makes picture books that are unique to tech. I often think of tech as the magic of our time.
Impressive feedback from people who literally got "the only book in the world
Editorial:What are the impressions of children and parents who have purchased BÜKI?
Kozlov:We were truly touched by the following feedback we received recently.
I am very happy to have made this purchase. I was thrilled by the wonder of being able to become the main character, and even now, 35 years later, I still treasure the book. The great thing about BÜKI's picture books is that they are made with the child as the main character. My cousin had a baby this time, and I was very impressed that "BÜKI" was exactly what I was looking for.
I have to admit that I have received a lot more good feedback than I initially thought I would: ....... I am really glad.
Editorial:Thank you very much. What other feedback do you have?
Kozlov:The feedback shared on Twitter was that a couple of moms & moms had purchased our products and commented that there had never been a book that could bring out the moms & moms ....... We felt that we had reached the people we wanted to reach! That made us feel like we were doing a good job. We also received a comment from a customer who appreciated the fact that we allow moms and dads to enter their own messages on the first page of the picture book, saying, "I was very touched to be able to leave words in a picture book that I normally can't convey to my child.
Editorial:By the way, what do you think of your dad's impression?
Kozlov:Probably a higher percentage of our books are bought by dads than traditional picture books. We do not know the exact percentage, but probably about half of our customers who purchase our books are male. I think the biggest reason for this ratio is that our sales tool is the Internet only. I have the impression that it is still mostly moms and women who choose picture books at bookstores, but I think the reason why so many dads are reaching us is because they know about our products on the Internet and are able to purchase them at .......
Your dream of entering the world of numerous masterpieces and adventures may come true. ......
Editorial:Finally, may I ask about the future development of BÜKI?
Kozlov:In the future, we would first like to increase the number of various types of picture books. For example, picture books for learning. For example, we would like to develop a story in which the hiragana used in children's names are used to help them learn hiragana.
Of course, we will also increase the variety of personalized picture books that are unique to BÜKI. At the same time, we are focusing on collaborations with other companies. Specifically, we would like to create picture books in which children can play the leading role among the picture books owned by existing publishers. For example, we imagine how happy children would be if we could collaborate with famous works such as "Elmer and the Dragon" or "Guri and Gura" to create a book in which children appear in a picture book along with famous characters, such as "Taro kun to ryu" or "Guri to gura to hanako-chan". That is why we are now calling on several publishers to use our platform for a project in which children as readers will appear in picture books.
Editorial:That's something to look forward to! It would be great if we could eat "Guri to Gura" sponge cake together!
Kozlov:I have always wanted to insert myself into various picture books ...... and I would love to make it happen.
After the interview
For quite a long time, there have been products that only include names and birthday numbers and are called "the world's one and only original picture book! I was surprised at the "BÜKI (book key)" product, but I was not attracted to such apparent customization. However, I had thought that such apparent customization was not attractive to me ......, but I was surprised by the work of "BÜKI". Normally, such customization would require a considerable increase in the number of copies printed to make it profitable. I think the beauty of "BÜKI" lies in the fact that it solved this problem using the power of the Internet and technology, and achieved a reasonable price. Why don't you give it to your children for their upcoming birthdays?
BÜKI" Official Website
https://hellobuki.com/
(Reporting and writing by Kazuyuki Seki)
