It'd be nice if there was an option to disable the Tome on spawn.

In my case I'm giving players an Akashic Tome containing all the books they would spawn with instead. I could give them an empty tome and let them put the books in themselves, but that seems like a bit of a waste of their time :)

This has existed as long as the mod has. Check your config file again. Key should be "giveJournalAtFirstJoin" iirc.