We are seeing a significant rash of new chemistry texts containing CD-ROMs attached. I am think of examples such as the Whitesel and Fox Organic Text, or 'Molecules, Matter & Change' by Atkins. These books sell for around $20 - $40, and the "multimedia" components (using e.g. Macromedia Director or bespoke creations) look very expensive to produce. Clearly these are "mass market" productions, where the expectation is of sales in the 100,000s. Interestingly, the CD ROM component is often advertised as "free", ie the price appears no more than would be expected of a normal printed volume. Does anyone have any general comments on this trend, which seems to be heading towards the conclusion that any text that does NOT have a CD ROM may not be able to compete effectively in what is a very competitive market sector? Do such CDs (the latest trend is to include "Internet pages of useful hyperlinks") enhance the chemistry? Is the labelling of such products as "free" attachments to conventional printed works merely a temporary phenomenon? Are we headed towards "free" printed texts with a main CD ROM product? Is the market rate of around $40 or less sustainable? And are the production costs (I estimate, from no particular position of knowledge, that these things must cost > $500,000 to produce) such that only mass market publishers will be able to produce them? Finally, what proportion of recipients nowadays actually have the equipment to read the CD ROMs? Dr Henry Rzepa, Dept. Chemistry, Imperial College, LONDON SW7 2AY; mailto:rzepa@ic.ac.uk; Tel (44) 171 594 5774; Fax: (44) 171 594 5804. URL: http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/rzepa/ chemweb: A list for Chemical Applications of the Internet. Archived as: http://www.lists.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/chemweb/ To unsubscribe, send to majordomo@ic.ac.uk the following message; unsubscribe chemweb List coordinator, Henry Rzepa (rzepa@ic.ac.uk)