My father wrote a family geneology and had it bound in leather with gold edges and a sewn binding at one of those "vanity publishers". I think that cost a fortune.
Back in the day I got 50 copies of my dissertation xeroxed and bound with a flexible leather-like (synthetic) cover at a xerox shop right across the street from Texas A&M. I even got to choose the color (so I chose Aggie maroon with gold lettering, of course!  ) Go to the xerox place closest to your local university and they will show you examples of what they can do. The three that I have left have lasted for many years, even though not sewn. Best of all, can we say CHEAP? The cost of binding was trivial compared with the cost of Xeroxing that much on good paper.
The actual theses and dissertations on blue-line paper that Texas A&M had bound for the library and department were bound elsewhere on contract, by a place that wouldn't do individual small orders.
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"Already we are boldly launched upon the deep; but soon we shall be lost in its unshored, harborless immensities." - - H. Melville, 1851
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