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Dr Jekell Oct 6, 2024

Notebook cover quandary

https://lemmy.world/post/20557194

Notebook cover quandary - Lemmy.World

There is something I have been wondering. Various manufacturers regularly put out new notebooks with specialty covers either as a yearly special or a limited edition product. My question is, why don’t they start making covers instead/as well? Hobonichi, Midori, Kokuyo and some others make basic covers but none make decorated paper, plastic, vinyl or fabric covers that can be moved between notebooks. It would be nice to be able to get a fabric cover printed with something like Van Gogh’s Starry Night.

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🇨🇦🇩🇪🇨🇳张殿李🇨🇳🇩🇪🇨🇦Oct 8, 2024

This sounds like a business opportunity.

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🇨🇦🇩🇪🇨🇳张殿李🇨🇳🇩🇪🇨🇦Oct 8, 2024

Digging around on Taobao, I’ve found a few shops that provide these, but not very many. (Example picture below with A5 and A6 covers.) One issue I can see is notebook thickness and cover type. You might have to make a few “A5” covers, say.

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EightLeggedFreak Oct 8, 2024

One issue I can see is notebook thickness and cover type. You might have to make a few “A5” covers, say.

Make it elastic in the middle for the spine. Then you can offer something like only two sizes

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🇨🇦🇩🇪🇨🇳张殿李🇨🇳🇩🇪🇨🇦Oct 9, 2024

Actually looking at how these people make them, you can see the trick with that narrow band on the lower side. They make the back of the fabric tail long and put the band to wrap around the back cover, then you fold the long tail around the back cover of the notebook and slip it through that little band to hold it in place. The result is a book cover that fits a very broad range of sizes.

I’ve got some of these on order because they look kind of interesting. I’ll test them out with various kinds of notebook cores.

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🇨🇦🇩🇪🇨🇳张殿李🇨🇳🇩🇪🇨🇦

OK, I took delivery of an example today. Here’s my report.

If this kind of thing isn’t readily available in North America there’s definitely a business opportunity here. This is not complicated to make, looks gorgeous, feels gorgeous in the hands, and makes even the crap notebook core I used for the test a work of art.

张殿李 (@[email protected])

So, in a discussion on a Lemmy instance¹ someone asked about specialty covers on notebooks instead of reusable notebook covers and why people didn't make the latter anymore. Curious about this (I was never really a user of notebook covers because the ones I saw were always cheap plastic garbage with twee Japanimation covers or the like), I went digging around on Taobao to see if there were more adult variations on this and found … well at first I didn't find many. It turns out I just didn't have the right words. Upon learning the correct vocabulary, I found plenty (a listing attached as an example). I also ordered one, plus a horribly cheap notebook core, to test them out and see how they solve the notebook size issue. I've got another, larger (350-page!) notebook coming, as well as another cover, so there will be another photo-essay on the topic in the near future. As usual alt text contains explanations and Mastodon users will have to click in to see all the images. #Notebook #ProtectiveCover #Decorative #WritingTools @[email protected] --- ¹ https://ttrpg.network/post/10678841

Pixelfed