Converting a new, large perfect bound paperback to a durable hardback
This sounds like a much better candidate for honing your book-repair/book-binding skills.  If your goal is solely to increase the book's durability, then you have several options available...

If the book is recently published, it may be available as an e-book.  Author's will sometimes offer discounted e-book versions of their books to owners of physically printed copies.  E-books are the ultimate in durability as even if your e-book-reader gets destroyed, as a registered owner, you can usually just download a new copy into your new reader.

Alternatively, you could use a blow dryer to separate the pages of your perfectly bound copy, then put them in sheet protectors and mount them in a three ring binder.  I did that to some of my college textbooks thirty years ago and they are still perfectly readable today.

For a real binding solution, it is pretty simple to add cardboard reinforcements to the currently soft covers and spine.  Here is a very complete tutorial on that process.

Beyond that level, you will need to separate the pages as in the 3-ring binder approach, but once you have done that, a number of diy book binding techniques become available.  There is a youtube channel called Sea Lemon which goes over quite a few string binding techniques.