I made permanent alteration to such a book and have been thrilled with how functional the result is! I took the errant tome to a quick copy place and had them trim off the glued binding and replace it with a spiral binding.

Also had them laminate the front & back covers--the back was a stiffer replacement cover I'd cut to size from spare cardboard; I kept the original back as a regular page inside that but it could be discarded if yours has no useful info on it. I also had cut a few spare pages to size for insertion as coloured dividers between sections and some for blank note pages inside front & back covers. I cut these to the book's original size and the added pages got trimmed to perfect fit in the same step where they removed the old glued spine.

The book is now a pleasure to use: it lies flat on table, music stand or piano and everyone who sees it wants to know where I bought that edition. I plan to apply the same treatment to a couple of cookbooks that won't lie flat on the counter.

~CH.