As publishers move from selling printed content to licensing electronic access, the familiar ways of doing business and doing cost-price analyses change. This is one of the reasons why publishers tend to be hesitant about jumping into the electronic arena. There is a lot of revenue risk. There are also new marketing problems. Significant marketing resources must be put into closing each individual sale.
Demo disks are helpful and trial periods often required.
Well, despite the above difficulties, ACM does firmly believe in the growing importance of electronic access to scientific and technical information. Today, there are electronic document interchange standards that have not only been passed by international standards organizations, but, more important, are now being implemented in more and more publishing software. The technology is also getting cheaper. Even though one cannot go out and buy a complete system that does everything one might wish, most of the pieces now exist and can be integrated with some development work and customization for one's specific application. And, as I mentioned, there is an experience base with staff to facilitate the transition.