half binding

For leather or half-leather bindings a strip of wrapping paper or thin cardboard is cut.
Practical Bookbinding|Paul Adam
Books bound in half-cloth or half-leather have the sides covered with paper; the latter often with cloth.
Practical Bookbinding|Paul Adam
For the stronger end papers and in half-leather bindings a cloth joint is used.
Practical Bookbinding|Paul Adam
Cloth must be used for sides of all books bound in half-leather or half-duck.
Library Bookbinding|Arthur Low Bailey

It was a ledger with a half-leather binding such as storekeepers use for accounts.
The Garden of Eden|Max Brand

British Dictionary definitions for half-leather

half-leather

noun

a type of half-binding in which the backs and corners of a book are bound in leather

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012