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Ya'll may also want to check out Midori¹, a favorite of the journaling community. There's also Northbooks², a small American company. And Nanami Paper³ if you want to try out quality paper in the ultra-thin direction.

[1]: https://md.midori-japan.co.jp/en/products/mdnote-cotton/

[2]: https://gonorthbooks.com/

[3]: https://www.amazon.com/Cafe-Note-Tomoe-River-Journal/dp/B073...

I love Midori but even with the covers they simply aren't sturdy enough for popping in a bag without getting damaged.
> From 2005, Leuchtturm.. took on Moleskine, matching them for quality.. older companies like Clairefontaine, Rhodia, and Paperblanks refreshed their offerings. Western hipsters, always alert to high-end Japanese design, started to import notebooks from companies like Midori, Hobonichi, and Stalogy, which bested any of the European brands with their exquisite papers and bindings (Moleskine and Leuchtturm both use mainly Taiwanese paper). In the US, Field Notes struck a utilitarian chord with a mid-century aesthetic. All presented a fresh spin on the basic product, and all benefited from the product building that Moleskine had done.

Stalogy has thin paper with minimal bleed, enabling small notebooks with more pages for writing and reference.

Rhodia and Leuchtturm, and probably others, also have better paper than Moleskine... this is especially noticeable as a fountain pen user.

I'm locked into Moleskine, though: I started using them around 20 years ago, when there wasn't so much competition in the market (or at least not where I lived) and also their paper was better than now. And now I have a long row of them in a shelf, which keeps slowly growing. And they are slightly smaller than other brands (Moleskine pocket notebooks are 90 x 140 mm, Leuchtturm 90 x 150, Rhodia 95 x 140, Stalogy I've never used but from Google search it seems to be 105 x 148). So if I switched brand, the new ones would stick out like a sore thumb.

If anyone knows a brand with better paper but the same size as Moleskine pocket notebooks, I would be grateful.

> (Moleskine and Leuchtturm both use mainly Taiwanese paper)

I guess us Europeans can't even make paper anymore... I hope one day it'll be widely obvious to everyone that the true architects of our impoverishment are these CEOs who organized the offshoring of all our supply chain. But in the mean time we'll probably keep on blaming migrants for a while.

I'm curious about the main use-cases for physical notebooks from folks on HN. I love the idea of physical notebooks, but also have years of digital notes that are searchable and that I can access on any device. I feel like I'm in too deep with digital, and like the ability to access it anywhere.

Has anyone made the switch from digital to physical and loved it? What kind of notes are you taking, how did you get it to stick?

You can look at some of my notebook pages: https://wonger.dev/notebook-love#:~:text=some%20pages%20from...

  Journal entries, charts, sketches, lists, schedules, goals, code, math, mind maps, outlines, itineraries
Like others have said, it augments digital notes, not replaces them. 3 reasons I stuck with notebooks:

- I became frustrated with digital sketching. Too clumsy.

- I wanted to be creative and flesh out ideas without being next to a computer.

- I found a comfy brand of notebook I enjoy using. In the past, notetaking never stuck with me because I didn't like the notebooks.

I often go to Barnes & Noble to sit and work on my laptop with a coworker. They have nice seats, no shortage of reference material to settle debates, and happen to be in closer proximity to my office than a library.

One cold winter day, as I was typing out a rough design for a major project, I decided it was just too tedious to work that way. My hands were cold, typing hurt, and my fingers couldn’t keep up with my head. I was trying to track all sorts of interdependent services in my head.

I got up, grabbed a notebook and pen from the shelves, and walked to the checkout counter. Coincidentally, both were Moleskine-branded, but to this day, I know nothing about the company. All I know is that it was far less frustrating to scribble crude diagrams on paper than it was to type them up.

Once I got everything down on paper, I still had to type it all. The scribbles were barely legible to me, let alone the other people on my team.

Pen and paper didn’t replace digital; rather, they augmented it.

For me the benefit is avoiding distractions while writing. I can’t cmd+f to search my notes but I also can’t cmd+tab to switch to my email tab.
I have 14 years of personal journals and 7 years of programming/math/music notes. I can usually find old entries right away because it's much easier to remember where I was when I wrote it, and why. Part of it is the muscle memory of moving a pen, and part of it is because I would have to care enough about a topic to sit down and put ink to paper in the first place.

A good deal of my technical notes are write-only anyway. Slowing down and jotting things once gave me all the understanding I've ever needed. This is less likely to happen with copy/paste.

I think paper exercises your brain, while these fancy programs attempt to replace it.

I feel like I'm in too deep with digital, and like the ability to access it anywhere.

You can have both.

My wife uses a smart pen that tracks her writing in her notebooks and creates searchable PDFs.

Every couple of months she unloads it via Bluetooth into iCloud and the pages are available everywhere she is.

She recently turned off the pen's built-in OCR after she found that macOS does a much better job of automatically OCRing the pages just by dropping the PDFs into the file system.

I started carrying notebook and pen in my breast pocket when my children were small. I would do a lot of thinking about my work while I was caring for them, and I wanted something to catch my thoughts. Something I could put away instantly when someone needed a push on the swings and pull back out half an hour later, and have it be just as I left it. I still do this occasionally, but these days I can just use a full sized notebook for sketching out ideas.

Nevertheless, I’ve found it incredibly useful to carry a pocket notebook still. Moleskine for a while, but the paper kind of sucks. These days I pick up anything with a sewn binding and hope I get lucky. But anyway, a big reason is social. People react much better when you grab a notebook and start writing than they do if you pull out your phone. One says, “your words are very important to me,” the other says, “I’m ignoring you.”

I use physical notebooks for ephemeral information (i.e. todo lists and ideas). The problem with digital is its convenience: it can grow infinitely without affecting you. There’s nothing to distinguish an old note and a recent one.

A notebook’s pages physically accumulate as they’re written on. It forces me to acknowledge them. If I need to write something new and must skip ten sheets before I find a blank one (I rip out and throw away pages as they’re done), it means there’s a fair amount of unrealised stuff that I haven’t gotten to. Time to reevaluate: read what’s in there and decide what still needs to be in there and what realistically has passed its expiration date of relevance/excitement/importance and should be trimmed.

I have a stack of moleskeine's small flip up art collection sketch pads and take one with me most places. I have one of their music notebooks but that was more aspirational to buy, though I've used it. the use cases include sequence diagrams for processes and code, product ideas, song lyrics, character sketches and story fragments, thoughts I wouldn't put into an electronic device, training diagrams, etc. I write and draw to think and reason things through, and the notebooks are essential to that.
Been filling notebooks for years while also keeping pretty meticulous digital notes. Physical is mostly personal or ideas (sometimes for work). Digital is mostly work.

I like to doodle and draw alongside note-taking and there's no substitute for analog there IMO. Plus, being able to write and not be on a device after a long day at work is a relief.

Lack of search can be an issue. But then I sometimes create indexes to things like book notes or stuff I'm learning and that is a pleasure in itself.

Also pairs well with a fountain pen & ink hobby.

Two reasons. 1: you retain more information writing it down on physical paper. 2: I have never needed to search ancient notes, most last a couple weeks at the longest, and thanks to point #1 you know where things are in that notebook better than you’d guess.
They are not mutually exclusive, in the era of ubiquitous cameras and handwriting recognition.

Paper and physical notebooks offer motor memory and time delay before data ingestion by cloud analytics.

I dare you to bring a device to a meeting with me.
I love my Maruman Mnemosyne 105 (not the 182 which is single sided) notebooks (I've been using them for years). The great thing about them is that the paper is thin but there is no bleed through even with fountain pens.

They're also much more practical for ideating than a Leuchtturm because they are perforated for tearing off. With a Leuchtturm there is a hesitation to write because you don't want to waste paper or mess up a nice notebook, but the Mnemosyne there is no such hesitation (even though it's nice paper).

https://www.jetpens.com/Maruman-Mnemosyne-N105-Notebook-A5-D...

Also, although I've been a fountain pen enthusiast for years (LAMY, TWSBI, Pilot), I find I can get the same quality of writing from a inky rolling ball pen like the Pilot Precise V5 RT. They're much cheaper and easier to carry around than a fountain pen.

https://www.target.com/p/pilot-3ct-precise-v5-rolling-ball-p...

I prefer notebooks with rings at the top (A5 or A6). I think being left-handed also plays a role in this preference, as it makes writing more comfortable for me.
Rhodia makes some good ones like that and so does Field Notes.
I think the notebook itself is secondary to the system employed for note taking. For me bullet journaling changed what I do inside a notebook roughly 10 years ago. Today I have moved back to scratch-your-own-itch digital tool to manage a bullet journal with markdown syntax: https://github.com/coezbek/rodo
Moleskine is nice, but have you ever tried Leuchtturm1917?
They’re ok, but I prefer the slightly smaller format of Moleskine that strangely only they seem to make.

It’s astonishing how much these branded notebooks cost. They must have great margins, not just Moleskine as described in the article.

Leuchtturm1917 is so much better for fountain pens: the paper is smooth and the ink doesn't feather. The numbered pages are a great touch.
Not sure why, however in high humidity, Leuchtturm pages stick together much more frequently where moleskine do not at all.
The A4 hardback with square dotted paper is really nice. Before I moved my notes into text files, I used to put everything into mine. Work notes, sketches, plans, etc etc. Leuchtterm make gorgeous notebooks.
Fascinating! I myself am partial to the Muji lay flat notebooks.

Question: how can I find a printer to make my own? I run a small business making staff paper notebooks. I want to make lay flat, thread + tape bound ones. How can I find a printer that can help me replicate? (I also want to launch a line of cheap mead-like notebooks, but similarly have trouble figuring out how to get those done.) most places will do spiral, wire-o, or saddle stitch with essentially copy paper but I’d like to be able to make these more specialized items.

I’m not 100% sure I can help here, but the company I work for, we work with a printer / producer / manufacturer in Ecuador. If you’d like to shoot me an email with what you’d like to produce, I can see if it’s something they can make. (We manufacture fair trade goods, working with some producers, including notebooks… so this might be within the realm. I think the hardest part would be getting the exact paper you would want).

My email is in my profile.

(Also not entirely altruistic as I struggle to find notebooks I love, and frequently revert back to legal pads which just don’t work quite the same).

100% agree with the muji ones. I buy the planner every year. I do most of my organisation and most of my thinking work on a hoard of a two foot thick slab of muji squared paper and enough gel pen refills to last 20 years.
Mind sharing more about your business? How did you end up doing that? Are you competitive at all on prices or are you mostly benefit from the fact that it's a local product for your niche market?
I'm a big fan of MUJI notebooks. Perfect for me on the cost-quality spectrum and they have blank paper options. I have some from high school that still held up.
I spend a fair bit of time out in the woods or on the water, I've become a huge fan of Write in the Rain products, along with Japanese made mechanical pencils. My writing and structure has improved a lot after volunteering with the local marine search and rescue crew. Having to write a lot of logging information for training and missions while cooping with the boat movement and weather adds extra challenge!
I personally prefer Rhodia notepads and notebooks: I prefer the stark whiteness of the paper, the smoother paper, and the 5mm dot grid. Moleskine's marketing is simply too aggressive: they don't sell notebooks, they sell an aesthetic.

I'm not going to claim to be above such marketing tactics: I'm definitely not. But Moleskine's claim to sell authentic Parisian notebooks used by struggling authors is such obvious bullshit.

It reminds me of the 'Original Australian Ugg Boot Company', which is an American business that tried to trademark the name of a generic product made by countless Australian businesses from offcuts of sheepskin. Just as everyone in the southern half of Australia has a pair of Ugg boots (but only Bogans will wear them in public), so those famous authors used moleskine notebooks: they're not good quality products; they're just ubiquitous and cheap.

“Do you know there’s a section of our customer base that buys a fresh Moleskine every time they come into a store? We have no idea what they do with them”

I give them out. I have far too many moleskine's yet I still buy one every time I'm in a store with them... I just can't stand seeing someone using a crap notebook. So when someone I like comes into my office and they're using some free shit they got as swag from salesforce or w/e, I give them a moleskine and a F-701.

Pretty much the only moleskine I got, and still use regularly. Is the A5 week to a page diary.

I love that the right hand side of any opening is lined for free form writing. And the thing is small enough to fit in your pocket.

Absolute game changer, I think I'm up to my fourth year in a row now.

Other than that I have used lechturm1917, I really like the numbered pages, but I find it difficult to get in any local bookstore.

Having the pocket diary has changed the way I do notes, so I'm finding I need it less and less.

I'm using a pilot juice-it-up four coloured pen 0.4mm ATM and love it to bits, but the ink runs out way too fast. It would be lovely if someone made a pen that has such vivid colours end flows well without quickly emptying the tank

I mainly use Field Notes brand. I like the thinner covers.

I tend to grab a new book pretty commercial project, so those books didn't always get filled before I'm done with them.

I also go through a series for sketching. I wish I could find something the same size that was good for water color though.

Here I am using the backs of paper from spammy paper mail (post) held together with a binder clip and the random pen I got from my recent visit to a bank.

The price in these things seems a lot to me. But I also spent money on a Remarkable (which is nice too).

Leuchtturm paper bleeds like a napkin, so hopeless. Moleskine works. Hobonichi rules.
Honestly, I now think most people with a Moleskin are doing it primarily for show. They do have nice quality paper, so it's not really a bad choice, only could be better depending on what your exact needs are.

For work I ended at Maruman Mnemosyne and I'm always happy with them. It's a Japanese brand with great paper, nice ergonomics of easily fitting a pen in their spire and plenty of combinations of size and grid pattern.

Peter Pauper Press is my go to notebook. They aren't elegant in their simplicity like a Moleskin but they are lovely and very functional.
I wasn't clear if they bought the "Moleskine" trademark, did they? Apparently the original company had been sold before.
Moleskine paper is like toilet paper, no good if you use a fountain pen.

I use Clairfontaine notebooks, way better.

My rule of thumb when reading a headline that says "How xx did yy." Is to always wonder "Did xx do yy?"

There doesn't seem to be anything in the article to suggest that these particular notebooks are anything other than fashion accessories and Veblen goods, certainly nothing to suggest any kind of conquering of the "Digital Era".

I have always failed to connect with the Moleskine admiration movement. Every time I go to one of those, kinda upscale, stationary stores, it would be kept there. I end up marvelling at the combination of its sheer inflated price and mediocrity and I end up buying a local notebook (of late that has been Paperkraft).

This is very relatable:

> buys a fresh Moleskine every time they come into a store? We have no idea what they do with them

I have known people who keep (as they almost always do not use those) Molsekine notebooks just to keep it. They would drag one around meeting to meeting, keep it on their office desks, or in their home and wouldn't fail to talk about it when a chance arises.

I did buy one years ago and it was such a waste of money. It was fit for none of ball, gel, or fountain pens. Their seams are very fragile and ugly - I can see thread peering out and holes stretched already. I tried their even costlier models and no improvement.

The best notebooks I have used over journalising and note taking since mid-late 1990s (when I was a kid) are:

- A few bought in Venice (apparently a very very old family owned store) - I forget the name.

- A local Indian brand Brahma Books which was sold out to a bigger brand and of course stopped making good notebooks

- A notebook my friend brought me from a Walmart or Costco when he returned from USA (he knew I loved writing on paper and he picked one from shelf which was not at all costly). I asked him and he said it was the store brand and not some other brand and cost few dollars iirc.

Any Moleskine I have seen or touched, or the one I used, doesn't even come close to quality of these. I think purchasing and keeping Moleskine in itself is the bobby and the experience. Maybe.

I can only write with papermate felt tip. And I love me some dotted paper.
For those in Europe who have a Flying Tiger Copenhagen nearby, their 'Bullet Journal' is a great, cheap notebook (seriously, 5 EUR, compared to 3-4x that for a Moleskine). Dotted, numbered pages. Paper quality is fine, I use a fountain pen so there's a bit of ghosting and a bit of bleed through, but it's only really noticeable if you lift the notebook up and really study the letters.

The only thing I don't like about it is the STUPID lettering on the cover. Just give me a plain, blank cover! They keep doing seasonal ranges with reasonably acceptable covers, but the pages aren't numbered, which, you know, I shouldn't complain about for 5 EUR, but it's just so nearly perfect...

https://flyingtiger.com/en-hu/products/bullet-planner-a5-302...