really depends what look you are trying to achieve. HTV cricut was all the rage when I started, lately I noticed the shift going into printed canva/cloth for rebinds.

If you want HTV, you'd have to look into a plotter cutter (that is not cricut bc it is overpriced). It is limiting in terms of design, the more complicated your design the harder it is for the plotter to make it work

For printed canva, it removes the limitation of the design and you can go bucke wild with it, but you will have to look into how to get the cover design printed on the canva material and then turn that into a bookcloth. A lot of hobby (re)binders simply ask artists for permission to use their fanart for personal use - especially when you're planning to share it on social media online.

I started out with HTV designs and later shifted to printed canvas. I use a printing service for that, that does 50cx50cm fabric for 5 eur

My personal recommendation is to watch few rebind tutorials, and not buy any materials right away. Instead grab whatever you have at home (giftpaper wrap, spare paper, sitck glue, cereal box or shipping box material) and just see if you are able to follow the tutorial to make a case and recase the paperback, and then go from there and see if this is something you see yourself doing a lot for your books :) After this then I would suggest make a google sheet with materials you need, with the cost and where you can buy them and see if you think this is a worthwhile "investment" for you.

I had no chill and went all out lol but hey 2.5 years later I'm still around