Professionally printing FSF PDFs?

From looking at FSF's site, the most recent version of GNU Emacs Lisp Reference Manual is not available as a hard copy. But I'd like to have a nicely bound hardback of this. Anyone have a good experience with printing such texts and having good outcomes that they could recommend? Or does anyone know if FSF actually does offer the most recent version as a hard copy? ​ This is 1337 pages, so it would likely be hardback (but that's not a requirement on my part - I think some print on demand companies I've used in the past had a requirement that anything above a certain amount of pages had to be hardback, though).

I've bound books of that size before myself but I usually split it into smaller books of say 300 pages and spiral-bound each of them with a cover and backing. I just needed a paper cutter, a machine to punch the holes in, clear covers, some tough and flexible thin sheets for the back, and coils.

> This is 1337 pages wow, so l33t!

I found a local print shop that does double-sided printing and spiral binding, I also typically keep it to 300 pages as the other commenter did. I shopped around, there's quite a bit of price variation. Now I just email them the file and pick up the book the next day. I printed the org-mode manual and the emacs tutorial that way (both are just under 300 pp). Will probably do the reference manual at some point. The shop also uses a clear cover and a flexible backing.

Ha, yeah, I noticed that, too. :)

I'm kinda picky, so I would rather have something bound if I can get it. Lulu is what I've used before for OOP books (like Paul Graham's On Lisp), or never-printed books like FSF PDFs, but it seems they have a cutoff long before 1337 pages...800 pages. So I'd have to print it in two parts if I used Lulu. I have an older edition of this book that is over \~1100 pages, but I'm not sure who FSF used to print it, and if they are capable of doing 1337. Maybe I'll look at printing it in two parts. The older copy is a BEAST to lug around.

Honestly though, I like having smaller books because then you can read several parts in parallel or read them on the go. When I bind them myself, I typically scale the books down %-wise (font size is key here) so that I can carry them in my coat pocket.

In the long-ago past, I’d just print them double-sided on a laser printer and then use a 3-hole punch. They will fit in a thick 3-ring binder (just get a good one). An upside to this is that the manual will have no problem lying flat while open. Printing shops can do that for you, but it’ll cost. Edit: also, slant ring binders are great when you have this many pages. You’ll probably need a 4” binder for the emacs-lisp manual, though.