Having worked for a bookbinder for about a year though I absolutely can assure anyone "hobbyist" binding has little in common with what professionals do. There is more tooling, more (expensive) machinery, more steps and more process refactoring. As can be expected, if someone's hobby is another one's craft and income. It's less of "The journey is the reward".

I’m having a hard time visualizing this. How do you use bookbinding techniques to make these things? I think I have a wrong picture in my head.

How did i build docking stations? Well, the way you create the back of a book (not of course the "inlay" or "pages") is usually by working on a thick board (you may call it "paperboard") and covering it with some sort of leather (my literal translation would be "leather paper"). With the same technique you can create other objects as well. Boxes would be the most obvious ones but any form that comes to your mind and you consider doable. I basically did that "around" a cable ;-)