You have gathered your data—text, images, audio, animations, and so on—and built your application. Now you want to put it on a CD-ROM for distribution. The process of turning an application and its associated files into a CD-ROM disc loosely divides into the following stages:
Premastering
Final Testing
Mastering and Replication
These stages often merge and overlap. Premastering, testing, mastering, and low-quantity replication are activities you can perform in-house if you want to invest the time and effort. Large-scale replication, however, which requires an enormous capital investment, will probably be done by a company that specializes in this service, such as 3M.