...and here's the actual cover.

There it is, all glued-up & finished.  Overall I'm pretty pleased...definitely hit a few snags.  But I know how to make a better cover next time.

all paper edges were coated in multiple layers of white glue, both interior and exterior.  Makes for a surprisingly solid structure, which was great considering how much material I was removing from the text block.  I used the original foam insert from the packaging to lock the tablet in place, but that meant the remaining page borders were between 3/8ths and 1/4 of an inch.  So it certainly needed a lot of strengthening.
All that remains is to air it out to remove the smell of E-6000 (really good industrial glue)...