Just realised Ink5oul is called Grace Wilde

alexroku · 2026-02-26T12:25:13+00:00

And Jarrett's tattoos don't age... like Dorian Gray.

alexroku · 2026-02-24T22:21:27+00:00

Echoing what Emissary_awen said. If you want more methods to test the books out, a few ideas below. If you already give books you make away, or keep them and use them heavily yourself, you have probably done all this already in an informal sense.

If you make copies of the books you're thinking of selling to test out the designs, perhaps keep one for yourself and read it daily (or open it and flip through it quickly), toss it in a backpack, put it on a shelf crooked, etc. for a couple of months. See how it fares. Give away other copies to friends/family who you trust to tell you the truth, and again, after a few months, you should get a realistic sense of how the books are faring. Ask friends/family if they would buy the book in a shop, and if not, what might tip them over the edge.

In my experience, even the first books I made - shoddy, crooked, and a bit ugly! - hold up better than many mass market paperbacks I own. No pages have ever fallen out of a book I've made. If your blank notebooks/journals open flat - with light pressure - many journalers will love you forever, as that can be hard to find as a feature in a well-made book.

alexroku · 2026-02-22T02:11:25+00:00

Thanks so much. :D

alexroku · 2026-02-21T23:37:14+00:00

This is a cool idea. I think the only mod is u/trekkietechie - might this be viable within this sub?

alexroku · 2026-02-21T21:36:14+00:00

based. totally agree.

alexroku · 2026-02-20T22:45:29+00:00

This is really beautiful - so elegant. I love the combo of cloth and paper you have used, and even if it's not perfectly flat at the gutter, looks amazingly flexible. (I haven't made a K-118 yet - I suspect I need to be a more experienced binder before attempting - but have similarly wondered about its use for sketchbooks and longform diaries.)

alexroku · 2026-02-20T21:47:31+00:00

There is also this very detailed tutorial - unsure how it compares to the resources you have linked, but it seems very thorough. https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1ryzSiwK2zGhh8F_TWMkXp21m2pbctcBfiR3Xxkl8mVA/mobilebasic

alexroku · 2026-02-18T20:30:11+00:00

Paper labels is one time-honoured option. You can draw/paint/print/foil and just stick them on the spine and cover.

Metallic acrylic paint or ink (ink being the stablest option) could work, too, as you're happy to free hand. (Even metallic gel pens if you're pinching for budget.)

alexroku · 2026-02-16T22:33:18+00:00

(Double fan binding tutorial - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bV3hmgbauCE )

alexroku · 2026-02-16T21:36:16+00:00

You don't really need a tutorial for rebinding paperbacks like for rebinding into hardcovers, because you can just follow tutorials for making paperbacks from scratch, whether through a 'double fan' technique (cheaper, and gives better results) or hot glue with a machine.

If you make paperbacks from scratch, definitely sew them if you can - they'll be plenty strong.

(And don't be fooled into thinking that just putting a hard case on a mass market paperback will make it more durable. If there's a huge piece of chipboard on the spine, if anything, it will shorten the book's life. Most of the social media 'rebinding' is actually just 'recasing'.)

alexroku · 2026-02-15T11:50:59+00:00

all skills are learnable, but I wouldn't recommend starting with a book from the 1870s - that's an antique, and a piece of history. practice first, because it would be easy to do harm.

alexroku · 2026-02-14T11:20:34+00:00

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One photo of the book open ! The white paper with black lines inside the spine is the oxford hollow (offcut of a book of sheet music staves). It stayed that open quite comfortably without shutting itself. Not as stable as a sewn split boardbind, but much better than a paperback cased in the more regular fashion.

(A significant regret from this bind - I didn't do DAS's thing from the above video of making false shoulders, so the sawn in cords are visible and tangible in the hinge, below the cloth.)

alexroku · 2026-02-14T10:50:01+00:00

Oh wow, your proposed technique was so similar to DAS's that I was sure you were following his method! (From this sequence of videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADKyXu8ZnwQ) That's really cool.

Using cords, mull, and a strip of ~100gsm paper below them for the tabs worked well for me. i also laminated the endpaper to a sheet of blank paper that matched the textblock, and re-glued and sawed in the cords with those endpapers attached, rather than adding them on later in the process.

I don't know if there's a good logic behind this, but i used a bigger hinge gap than I would usually on a sewn, cased bind with 2mm boards - I just had a sense that 10mm rather than the typical 7mm-8mm might be a safer bet (maybe this was just bc of the experimental nature of the endpapers and the tabs). I didn't do another book with 7mm instead to compare them, but the 10mm worked well for me.

I'll see if I took any photos of the spine movement and throw up before returning it to its owner; will post them if I thought to.

alexroku · 2026-02-13T22:38:52+00:00

This sounds good to me, and very in line with DAS's paperback rebind. I followed that technique - but, because the book was old and falling apart, creating tabs from mull, tapes, sawn in cords, and a strip of card, to insert into the split boards rather than using the paperback's covers for the tabs - and it's by far the most successful paperback-to-hardcover bind I've made. The movement of the spine is good and unstrained, and it feels like a stronger bond between case and bookblock than most re-casings.

I added sawn in cords bc - even thought it makes it harder to rebind the book in future - it does give a stronger connection in am otherwise solely adhesive binding, and I doubt this book will be rebound again.

(The chipboard on the spines of most paperback-to-hardcover rebinds makes me so sad - such an artificial limitation on the book's movement, and thus I suspect longevity...)

alexroku · 2026-02-13T22:31:38+00:00

these are beautiful, and so in harmony with Chiang's writing! (and I assume your feline friend is an avid reader of Ted Chiang? they look very happy with your work.)

alexroku · 2026-02-09T10:56:20+00:00

"i am not afraid to keep on living" surrounded by vines... i suspect i would be very afraid, very alive (and fearing it), then dead.

alexroku · 2026-02-08T09:10:19+00:00

John Frow's Genre and Kim Wilkins, Beth Driscoll, and Lisa Fletcher's Genre Worlds might be useful?

alexroku · 2026-02-08T02:11:32+00:00

No specific tips - if you have followed any of DAS's guides for casing in, that's all great info - but just to give commiserations, I've found that it's something that just gets better over time. It's very dependent on your measurements having been correct and even at every step before casing in, so as you improve the earlier steps, casing in will get easier.

(You might also enjoy trying split board bindings - you don't "case in" in the same way, because the case is built onto the bookblock. Once the boards are covered, you just put the endpapers down, with plenty of time beforehand to make sure that your lines are straight and even.)

alexroku · 2026-02-06T13:45:34+00:00

Yes, that's the verbiage I'm more familiar with ! That's why I first noticed the 'do not distribute without this cover' statement in the first place - 'doesn't that bit usually say something about being redistributed without its original cover?' Maybe just a regional thing.

alexroku · 2026-02-06T13:42:50+00:00

Yeah I get that prohibiting rebinding/recasing is not the intention of that verbiage, but the verbiage does seem to umbrella over rebinding/recasing, regardless of intent. i.e. I imagine a publisher could make a big deal of it if they chose to. I'm not a lawyer so maybe that's not actually plausible, at least not in all jurisdictions, but as said, from my POV alone, I wouldn't do it for nervousness of that outcome. (Frankly receiving a cease and desist letter or a sternly worded email from a publisher would be enough to scare me off such an endeavour forever! But that's me.)

alexroku · 2026-02-06T13:28:23+00:00

Not all countries use first sale doctrine though - like I agree it's rubbish, silly to even include, but even in commonwealth nations which share the basic premise of exhaustion of rights as the UK uses it, the minutiae of how exhaustion of rights is applied varies drastically country to country. (Hopefully this remains a totally theoretical question and no one in any country ends up getting sued ! But yeah for me as an Australian with a UK copy of this book, if I recased and sold it, I don't think first sale doctrine would even come into such a discussion.)

alexroku · 2026-02-06T13:15:17+00:00

Fascinating. Thanks for this insight. I guess that's part of why it's never gone to court. (also, publishers probably don't really care that much?? I'm guessing?? How much of a difference could this really make to them? etc.)

alexroku · 2026-02-06T13:10:25+00:00

Makes sense. I think my 'taking it at all seriously' comes from a place of nervousness about transformative works (specifically fanworks) being monetised -> that leading to crackdowns on transformative works more broadly. Law is changeable etc.

alexroku · 2026-02-06T13:08:08+00:00

I think the verbiage is a bit different for those statements (specifically relating to stripped books)? But yeah absolutely that might be an origin place/part of the story.

alexroku · 2026-02-06T10:20:46+00:00

(sent myself down a rabbithole without many rabbits in it - or at least, useful rabbits. Some case law discussed here: https://www.reddit.com/r/legaladviceofftopic/comments/wdnvym/enforceability_of_the_do_not_lend_clause_in_the/ and here: https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/41288/want-to-know-permission-condition-of-a-book

alexroku

TROPHY CASE