[joshlemer]

Funny you say that. I recently picked up a textbook on Corporate Finance for self-learning purposes. Going through the problem sets, it's not really that useful if you have no idea if you got the answer right or not. Looked all around online for where to buy the solutions manual, ended up just calling the publisher to ask. Turns out they refuse to sell the solutions manual to anyone not a registered instructor at a University.

It took like 5 minutes on the phone to even explain to them that I'm reading the book for self learning purposes. Like they'd never encountered such a thing. Even after explaining, they wouldn't let me have the solutions.

I ended up just going on the black market, and finding some anonymous person to sell me the solutions on WhatsApp for $25.

[ghodith]

Now would be a good time to upload the solutions to libgen so other people can skip the black market

[burnished]

Had a similar experience with an engineering text, contacted the author and he gave me the same shit.

[mi_lk]

How does one access the said black market? I might adventure myself to acquire similar things

[joshlemer]

I just googled, and by the way when you want to google for something with qustionable legality, it's best to use search engines not based in western countries, such as Yandex. There ended up being a lot of sites advertising the solutions manual for sale. But also, there are entire subreddits where these people post threads advertising that they have whatever ebook/solutions for sale with a whatsapp phone number included in the content. I messaged on Whatsapp and sent a paypal payment (yes, I had no recourse, it was a leap of faith) but it's not that much a risk since it's only $25.

[owenpalmer]

If you have to ask, you'll never know.