Young readers are taking on a very old hobby: Bookbinding

Think HGTV, but for books: A novel gets torn apart, its cover ripped away. Then, in mere minutes - with some glue, a utility knife, cardboard and cloth - it gets a spiffy new look.

Inspired by process videos on social media, a new generation is taking up an old-fashioned craft: bookbinding. They’re turning paperbacks into hardbacks, re-casing them in cloth or leather, and adding foil, vinyl or even LED lights to the covers. They’re etching the pages with lasers. They’re building specialty slipcases that look like castles or that lift the books as they open. They are, as one bookbinder on TikTok put it, disguising their fairy smut among their classics.

“People love collector’s editions that they can actually display and that match their decor … or just look really expensive,” said content creator Sydney Kerr, noting that remakes of the Netflix-branded Bridgerton books, featuring the actors’ faces, do especially well on social media.

“We love Jonathan Bailey,” Kerr added, “but ‘real faces’ is just not the vibe.”

“It’s a hobby where you can start really small,” said Erin Butcher, a computer scientist who started re-casing books in 2023. Beginners can use materials they already have at home, she added, and can finish projects relatively quickly. “Knitting or crocheting can take hours and hours and hours and hours just for something simple, like a scarf or a hat. With rebinding, if you’re not doing anything crazy or over-the-top, it’s something that can be done within a day.”

Of course, things can get over-the-top pretty fast: “After my first book, I bought a guillotine,” said Marina Armbrust, a university student in Germany. (The guillotine makes it easier to trim pages.)

The broader books industry is fanning the flame; publishers, too, are producing ever-lovelier limited editions. A commonly cited trendsetter: Entangled, which printed dragons on the fore-edges of Rebecca Yarros’s “Fourth Wing” - and has made similar design decisions for all titles in its Red Tower imprint. Especially when displayed flat on a retailer’s table, a printed edge is eye-catching and triggers “magpie syndrome,” said Justine Bylo, associate publisher at Entangled. It’s an acquisitive urge: “What’s that? I want that!”

Packaged in a luxe format, debuts and reissues alike have broken through to the bestseller lists - and the trend is spreading from fantasy and romance to horror and thrillers.

It’s a far cry from when popular genres were printed as cheaply as possible, in mass-market paperbacks - “Dorito chip books,” said Kelly Dearth, co-founder of LitJoy Crate. LitJoy and other book boxes helped spark the trend, sending subscribers limited editions that inspired FOMO in fandoms. Initially, publishers were slow to invest in customizations such as special endpapers and art, Dearth said. But what once was a niche (if eager) market doesn’t feel so niche anymore.

“At Costco, I picked up four books for the holidays, and I was like, ‘Look at these designed edges,’” Dearth said. “That used to be the number-one thing that was really hard to get.” (To up its game, LitJoy now offers annotated editions, marked up with the author’s handwriting and doodles.)

Such collectibles sell out quickly and sometimes cost hundreds of dollars. DIY bookbinding lets more fans in on the fun - and, for many, the new covers help express how they feel about the texts within.

“It’s nice to have something that is representative of the story - something a little bit more meaningful,” said Georgia Blackburn, who launched an Etsy shop where she sells books she re-covers in the style of Penguin Clothbound Classics. “Historically, people used to buy the text of a book and go get it bound. I think it’s quite nice to bring that back.”

For Alexa Jau, a hobbyist turned full-time bookbinder, crafting custom covers makes her favorite novels feel truly hers. She struggled with dyslexia growing up, and the world of literature had felt sealed off to her. “I think of the books as little trophies up on my shelf. They feel like this symbol of something I never thought would be part of my life,” Jau said.

One irony to getting caught up in the craft: The tomes can get so elaborate that they can’t be regularly handled. Some of Butcher’s creations “probably wouldn’t survive tons and tons of reading,” she said, sounding a little rueful. “It’s kind of funny to spend not a small sum of money to make all these books, and I’m not even reading them.”