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 regular one, or the imposed-sheets one (more on that below). 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. Call 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.
Color 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
Read it out at the counter, or just show them your screen.
- Print this PDFthe file on the stick
- Black and whitenot color
- Double-sidedhalves the paper
- Bound, if you wantcoil or comb, the cheap ones
That is the whole order. The only question they will ask is how you want it bound.
- Print this PDF“imposed sheets” on Codal
- Tabloid paper11 × 17 in, actual size
- Black and whitenot color
- Double-sidedpage 2 behind page 1
- Cut down the middleleft stack on top
- Bound, if you wantcoil or comb
If the shop can’t print on tabloid or cut the stack, take the regular PDF instead.
01
Print on tabloid, double-sided, so page 2 lands on the back of page 1 and page 6 on the back of page 5.
02
Keep the printed sheets in one stack, in the order they came out.
03
Cut the whole stack down the middle.
04
Put the left stack on top of the right one.
05
Pages 1 to 8 now run in order. Bind them.
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 license 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 license 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)