Don't worry folks, we're almost done here. I would just like to point out that I never said the repair would be fun. In fact, every time a recently published book falls apart on me, I get closer to splurging on a Kindle or some other e-reader.
When you take your text block out of the book press, it should be all nicey nice, with all the pages tightly bound, but opening cleanly like above. All we need to do now is attach the covers and spine bits. So stop marveling at your amazing new binding, and close the text block.
Place a little piece of scratch paper in between the first page and the little extra flap of spine lining fabric. Then take your brush and paste out the flap of fabric with your PVA glue. After you're all pasted out, remove the scratch paper, and place a clean piece of nonstick paper in between the flap and the first page.
Align the cover and place it down. Again make good contact with the glue by pressing down on the cover. Carefully turn the book over and repeat the process with the back cover. After you've got both covers glued, place your weights along the spine to apply continuous pressure as the glue dries.
Wait a while for the glue to dry. You probably don't need to wait overnight like with the binding. When the glue does seem pretty set, paste out the spine cover and glue that into it's correct position. You could put the book back in the press to place weights on the spine again. I gotta be honest though, I didn't really do that here because that little bit of spine doesn't really need to be super stuck down since it's purely decorative at this point. So I just pressed it in place for a couple minutes and then let it sit on the counter to dry.
Guess what! What? You're done! Ta-DA!
That was EPIC. Now I'm really tired and have to go take a nap. You should go enjoy your newly rebound book!
ADDENDUM: Making Someone Else Do the Work
If you have lots of non-rare books that need to be fixed but you don't want to bother doing it yourself, you can try sending your books to a professional binder. Kater Crafts is a bindery in Southern California that is often used by libraries. A word of warning though, most binders will chop off anywhere up to an inch of the text block in order to have perfect alignment, rather than fuss and set the original full text block into a book press such as in the repair I discussed. So you will likely be loosing a chunk of your book.
Again, don't send rare or very valuable books, to this (or any regular) bindery, but you could send your regular mass-produced modern books that have fallen apart. If you are looking to repair a valuable, or otherwise important book, it's important to contact a trained book conservator. You can contact us if you're having trouble finding someone.
Whether it's cost effective to rebind your books is something you're going to sort out for yourself. But do keep in mind that it is usually less of a waste of resources (like trees) to repair than to fully replace.
-J
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