The Care and Feeding of Scion books

I've had a lot of gaming books in my time, A LOT.   And they take their wear and tear just like any other book. 
But my scion books seem to fall apart amazingly fast.  I mean, they are seeing much more use then most game books(running 2-3 games a week), and my players have been less familiar with the system then they have in a long time(after a while all players had most vampire disciplines just straight memorized so they didnt need to rifle through books.)
And so I found my self contemplating buying my 3rd set of hero, demi, god today.....and had to stop myself.
Is there a better way to handle these books?  The bindings seem to be incredibly flimsy.  For a $35 dollar book, I find myself so disappointed in the spine of the book and the manufacturing.  A friend suggested regluing the bindings, has anyone had any luck with this?
I keep them in really good condition sans bindings, the covers are almost mint, but then pages start falling out.
Anyone have any suggestions?  Any horror stories about the scion books  you've had?

Im on my second hero book now but the front cover is almost tearing apart and falling off. Other than that everything is as mint as when I bought them

I've found that it depends on where I buy the books. I've learned not to buy my books from Borders because the bindings almost come broken. I'm on my second Hero book and its holding up well. I've alctually started looking at other hardback White Wolf books a Borders and noticed that most of them are cracked along the spine in one place or another.

I bought Ragnarok and many other books at my FLGS and I've had no problems with them.

Lambach:

The bindings seem to be incredibly flimsy.  For a $35 dollar book, I find myself so disappointed in the spine of the book and the manufacturing.  A friend suggested regluing the bindings, has anyone had any luck with this?

I have tried this on one of my previous books but I've found that usually, regluing them causes another slew of problems and is mostly a temporary solution. However, near where I live, there are some vintage book stores who can put people in touch with professionals who can rebind books. I can't comment on the price, as I have never used these services, but perhaps you could inquire to similar services.

Lambach:

Anyone have any suggestions? 

This might seem childish but perhaps you could compile a quick reference document in a binder with separators, one section in the binder containing quick and dirty quoting to the crunch each section is on. So whenever your players need to look up something just toss the binder over to the appropriate section. This would reduce wear and tear on the books as well as reduce time looking for any element that pops up during gaming.

There's a thread on the General Discussion and Announcements forum regarding fixing book bindings that you might find interesting.

http://forums.white-wolf.com/cs/forums/t/14726.aspx

Nice, thanks

Also, a lot of public libraries offer to repair book bindings (and that's what they do a lot of, so they aren't too bad at it.)

Maybe invest in PDF copies?

That's too expensive, buying the books and buying the PDF copies, etc. Besides, reading a PDF in the computer isn't the best thing in the world.

But you're missing the point. If there are problems with the books bindings and early deteoration White Wolf will have to see to that. The books are very, very expensive and we're puting our money in them so in the end they'll last two or three weeks? It's not for us to solve this problem, it's a manafacturing one. I bought my Mage The Ascension corebook in second hand and after 3 or 4 years in my hands it's still great, the same I can't say for the Dark Ages Mage book... The publisher must be acounted for, for these problems. It isn't we who have to buy two or three times the same book.

I can only state that my Hero and Companion (the only books I currently have in dead tree edition) seem to be holding up fine, but that's only one sample point.

I never experiance this unusual rate of decay people claim thier white wolf books go through. There is one exception Lords of Creation from Exalted's Dreams of the First Age did loss some pages. My Scion book have actually worn better than most books I own.

My books all had cover damage when I bought them, and other than my bookbag chewing them up a little, their holding up well so far. How much of that can be attributed to my friends understanding that (property damage=stabed in the face) is hard to say, but overall, I can't complain.