The bookcrafter is at a great advantage over the bookbinder ~ the latter has to work to brief ~ the crafter has a free hand. That sounds like a big advantage to the crafter. The bookcrafter may have ambititions beyond the skills ~ or materials ~ available. It gets worse than that. The crafter may not proficient at the skills ~ nor know the special requirements or difficulties presented by the materials available ~ or affordable.
When playing around with leather ~ and vegan substitutes ~ in recent years I was concentrating on learning ~ mainly ~ about covers [113411]. It also gave me the opportunity to play around with several different homemade bookblocks: notes on some of them are below.