Originally Posted by
Maat Mons
Back on 3.5, if the total amount of money the kingdom is spending on it's numerous military Wizards is a major burden, or if whatever it is that these "special inks" are made from is in short supply, there are some options for making cheaper spellbooks.
At ECL 8, a Geometer can add any spell to a spellbook for only 100 gp, regardless of level. And the Arcane Shorthand feat from Dragon 358 can cut that down to 50 gp. If you have some Geometers churning out spellbooks for all your other Wizards, you can save a lot of money outfitting your higher-level squads. The savings aren't anywhere near as large for the lower-level Wizards, but you can use some of the budget you free up from the high-level squads to help out with them.
Though it's always seemed strange to me that you can't cut pages out of a Blessed Book and rebind them into a smaller book. Or just craft a smaller version to start with. If you're self-crafting, it's 6,250 gp for a 1,000-page book. That's 6.25 gp per page. And with the above combo making each spell take up only half a page, regardless of level, that's 3.125 gp per spell.
So, when done efficiently, all the spells known by a 1st-level Gray Elf Collegiate Elven Generalist Wizard can be written for 237.5 gp. That's less than a suit of banded mail, and not much more than a breastplate or suit of splint mail.