Materials

• You will need a minimum of 32 sheets of A4 or U.S. letter-sized paper, some glue, some stiff cardboard and some leather. You can use many different types of paper, but the aforementioned minimum will give you a good feel for the necessary size for a successful binding. For glue, select from white glue to the highest quality rubber cement to fabric adhesive, depending on your budget and how strong you want the binding to be. If you can't afford leather, substitute fabric.
  
  

Putting it Together

• Stack the paper into four stacks of eight sheets. These will be your folios. Carefully fold the stacks in half. Unfold the folios and flip them over. Place two staples in the middle of each folio using a large stapler or by stapling into a soft material and folding the ends of the staples yourself. Stack the folios on top of each other and cut a thin piece of fabric about half an inch wider than the thickness of the folios and glue them into the middle of the fabric.
  
  Measure and cut the cardboard so that you have two pieces the same size as your folios and a third the size of the spine (the thickness of the folios stacked). Glue the cardboard to your leather, leaving a small amount of extra material between the covers and the spine to allow them to fold over. Trim the excess material off, or trim it down and fold it over your cardboard and glue it down.
  
  

Tips

• You can do many things to make your book more aesthetically pleasing and more durable. Add a liner paper or use harder materials for your cover. You can vary the size and amount of folios in your book and the material you use for the cover. This method can be easily adapted for recovering your old books. Experiment a few times with cheaper materials and figure out what works best for you.