if i'm buying a CD under the usual circumstances and at the usual price point, i expect it to be professionally mastered and manufactured.

if it's an adjunct to a book and the book is the main "thing" i'm buying, the above is probably but not necessarily automatically true. however unless you do a really good job preparing the CD at home there's a good chance that the home-madeness of it will cheapen the feel of the whole project. you might end up coloring people's opinions about the book or the main "thing" just by virtue of the fact that the package as a whole isn't the best it can be.

- speaking of, possibly the case with the Orietta CD? that really is a question; not an accusation masquerading as a question.

i think at the end of the day if you are presenting your work you want to do it in the best way you can. unfortunately the world is very small these days so you can't cut corners without someone instantly noticing. we already know how (not) expensive it is to manufacture a CD. on the flip side, i bet there is some creative way to present a CD-R such that the person buying it wouldn't care that it was a CD-R - it would just be cool.