The iPod revolution led to the development of an absurdly huge cottage industry of accessories and cases. Although I hope the Kindle becomes popular enough to attract some great industrial design in the near future, I also hope that the fanatical readers, who tend to be more contrarian than the average iPod owner, will pursue their own solutions for cool cases.

This man repurposed an existing bag he found at the Container Store to create what’s basically a do-it-yourself WaterField style cover: “I found the Baggallini Pocket Bagg. It holds the Kindle with little room to spare, which is exactly the size I needed.” The bag had several metal and plastic pieces inside, so to prevent cutting up the bag or scratching the Kindle’s screen he created a simple snap-on felt protector. Over on the Amazon site, another customer repurposed a leather day planner folder.

The most creative solution I’ve seen so far is this one by a member of Mobileread Forums. He bought a blank journal with a tooled leather cover, removed the pages, and built a custom Kindle holder out of the shell. He even used gold leafing around the sides of the case to simulate gold-edged paper. The leather cover is too ostentatious for my taste, but it’s definitely a striking and attractive solution. I’d love to see what it looks like with quirkier (i.e. less “elegant”) book cover choices.