That night, he did something he never imagined. He sat in his home office with the single complimentary copy, a scanner, and a cup of cold coffee. Page by page, he scanned the entire seventh edition. It took five hours. His neck ached. His printer ran out of ink at page 612—the chapter on game theory, ironically.
The student’s name was Mira. Her message, forwarded to him, read: “Prof. Kalu’s book is $180 new, $90 used, and $45 for the e-book. But the e-book requires a proprietary app that crashes on my laptop. I found a PDF search online: ‘kk david economics book pdf.’ The only result was a corrupted file from 2013. Why isn’t the college library hosting a free copy?”
“I’d like to check out my own book,” he said.
“I didn’t leak it,” David said. “I gave it away.”
Six months later, he received a package. Inside: a worn, coffee-stained copy of the first edition—the one he wrote in the basement. A sticky note on the cover read:
David’s phone rang. It was the department head.