These are very popular requests for people looking for a wedding photographer. There just seems to be an overwhelming amount of options out there! I guess what's popular are those magazine-style coffeetable albums? What's the difference between all these different albums? What makes one so much more expensive than the other?

For example
https://asukabook.com/ require you to register as a professional photographer to even see prices.
then there are books you can get for < $50 (20 pages) from mypublisher.com through costco which also seem to look good.

Looking through photography packages, these guys charge thousands of dollars for these albums. How do they base their prices for these albums? I'm sure they have to factor in a lot of their time is spent designing these albums.

In my recent search for a wedding photographer, I've seen most of the books in person.

The Asuka books I saw were all glossy magazine type book. Full page bleed, etc. Light paper weight though. (Felt like a magazine cover for the inside pages.) Main strong point is they seem to be much cheaper than any other book that allows for a modern layout.
Personally I think most of them come off as excessively busy and tacky. (modern layouts, not asuka in particular.)

I liked these guys best.
http://www.artleather.com/
Some nice quality leather with traditional matted books.

YMMV though.

Thanks for the input guys. I'm trying to register into Asukabook so I can get some more info from them and start playing with their layouts.

Mpix just introduced theirs. I got some samples of their paper and its awesome. I especially love their pearlescent paper. Def a big step us for those of us trying to make it lol. Not to mention they are decently priced as well.

Sweet. I like Mpix too. I gotta check those out as well.

For you guys providing albums, do you guys do the design layouts yourself or contract it to another design company? If you do them yourselves, how much time do you usually spend designing the album?

Originally Posted by VicRSTi

For you guys providing albums, do you guys do the design layouts yourself or contract it to another design company? If you do them yourselves, how much time do you usually spend designing the album?

I do the design myself. I want to make sure I am happy... And the customer. Usually I arrange it in chronological order. Since wedding etc.. As far as time it all depends on the amount of pictures and the different layouts I feel like using. Anywhere from a couple hours to 5-6 hrs.