How it works
Download it, hand it across a counter, carry out a book
No account, no permission, nothing to install. If you can get a file onto a phone or a USB stick, you can do this — and the staff at the shop do it all day.
Download the file
Open any book on the shelf and it takes you to its page on Codal, where we keep the library. Choose the PDF — the full-page one, or the booklet if the book has one. It downloads on the spot: no account, no email address, no card. Put it on your phone, or on a USB stick.
Take a PDF, not the EPUB. EPUB is for reading on a screen and a shop cannot print it.
Take it to a print shop
Office Depot or OfficeMax, Staples, FedEx Office, the copy shop near a school, a university print desk, your public library. Most will let you upload the file on their website and collect it later. All of them will take a USB stick across the counter.
A local shop usually beats a chain on a long document, and the money stays in your town. Ring two before you go.
Ask for three things
Black and white. Double-sided. Bound, if you want it bound. That is the entire order — there is nothing else you need to know and nothing else you need to decide.
Colour costs several times more, and there is nothing in these books that needs it.
Go and get it
A short book is usually ready the same day; a very long one might be tomorrow. Then it is a book, and it is yours. Write in the margins, break the spine, lend it to someone and never get it back.
Print a second copy while you are there. That is allowed too — see below.
What to say
The whole order, on one card
If the part putting you off is walking up to a counter and not knowing what to ask for — this is all of it. Read it out, or just show them the screen.
Take the booklet PDF if there is one
Some titles carry a second file: the same text laid out two pages to a side, so it folds into a book. Its page on Codal says whether it has one, and it is the one to take — two pages on every side means half the sides of ink and half the paper, which halves what you pay. The pages come out about the size of a paperback’s, which is what a book is anyway.
Tell the shop it is already imposed, so they print it as it is rather than shrinking it to fit the page.
- Print this PDFthe file on the stick
- Black and whitenot colour
- Double-sidedhalves the paper
- Bound, if you wantcoil or comb, the cheap ones
That is genuinely the whole thing. You are asking a shop to print a document — the same thing they do for every office on the street — and the only question they will come back with is how you want it held together.
The legal part
Yes, you are allowed
Nothing on this shelf needs anyone’s permission to print. Most of it is in the public domain — the copyright has expired and nobody owns it. The rest we publish under a licence that lets you print it, copy it, and pass it on regardless. Either way: print one, put it in a school library, hand it to a stranger, print thirty for a classroom. You do not need to ask us.
Print shops are cautious about copying books, and they are right to be: most books in the world are still in copyright, and the shop is the one on the hook. If yours hesitates, that is a fair question rather than a wall. Every book states its licence on its own page — open it at the counter and show them.
Every title says what it is licensed under, on its own page on Codal.(opens in a new tab)