Are you looking for refills for the Barnes & Noble journal covers?

[Plume145]

Okay, I thought I should post this because since I first bought this journal cover less than a year ago I have come across at least three people around the FP forums who own the same cover and are looking for refills besides those sold by B&N

Just to clarify, this is about the popular refillable journals they do, most of which seem to be what the store calls a '5x7' size - besides the one linked to above, there's also this one in textured leather and a few more. The refills they sell are sturdy, nicely designed, and cheap, but the paper? Total crapshoot :P

I've been searching for alternatives since around June 2013 without much luck. The main stumbling block is how to describe them with search words: the only thing that really differentiates a notebook that would work as a refill from the hundreds of other stitch-bound notebooks out there is the size, but describing it as '5x7' only returns hits about the B&N journals. I began to think it was somehow made specially for B&N and the choices were, fork out the cash for custom made or be stuck with half-baked solutions like cutting the bottom inch off a notebook that's the right width but just a little too long (did that once, it works, but it's kinda clunky).

Then today I was tucking a piece of B5 paper folded in half into the journal, as I've done several times before, but for the first time I noticed that it fit right in! It fit so perfectly that it was suddenly obvious the '5x7' size sold by B&N was exactly half of a B5 - better known as B6. Now, THAT is an actual, internationally recognizable standard that you can search!

And sure enough, you get plenty of results! Most of them seem to be from Japanese brands, which makes sense as B series are a lot more popular there than in the west, but that's no hardship given how great Japanese paper tends to be.

Anyway, hope this is useful to others too! It was a real 'aha!' moment for me, lol, so I thought I'd share

>>>> 10s version: If you're looking for a refill to your B&N cover, don't search for '5x7' notebooks, search for B6 notebooks.

[KrazyIvan]

Thank you for this. I have a couple of 5x7 journal covers (not B&N) that don't have refills for this same reason.

[Plume145]

Yeah, joke's on me though, because since I posted this I've been looking everywhere for a B6 journal, and even though there are lots on Rakuten and elsewhere, they all seem to be missing something - some are too expensive (like the Maruman on Jetpens) some are wire bound, others have graph paper (which I normally love but really makes me cringe in a journal) and yet others are skinny exercise-book type things with about 30 pages, instead of a couple hundred like you would need for a journal.

WTH, dude? Where are the simple, honest clothbound B6 journals with lined off-white or cream pages that don't cost as much as the stupid cover? lol

I hope you have better luck than me :P Or at least that the cost of the Maruman doesn't faze you, if it was half the price I'd be all over it like white on rice, and never mind the reviewer who said it's too absorbent with FPs, I'd at least give it a chance But for $20 apiece plus half that in shipping - gulp. No.