(They like to count on the fact that what you sent is nailed down, not shifting as they work on it.) I also move things into Word because I use Word styles to indicate to the publisher elements like heads, subheads, figure captions, bullets, and numbered list items. I do this because it creates a final versioning checkpoint - changing the file after you send the link, which is a feature in Google Docs, becomes a problem when you are sending files to the publisher. When the time came to prepare the manuscript for the publisher, I had to transfer everything into Microsoft Word. One of my collaborators on this project is a frequent flyer on United Airlines, a company whose missteps we criticize in the text, but he restricted his complaints to a few good-natured smartass comments. (I know you can control this with permissions, but if everybody behaves themselves you donвЂ™t have to go to that extra trouble.) Also, the comment threads work only if your collaborators are generally in agreement with you on content - this allows everybody to be frank with each other, without the comments degenerating into a snark and personal attacks. They need to commit to make all changes in the suggesting mode, rather than just editing. This works great, but requires some discipline on the part of your collaborators. (IвЂ™ve obscured some of the text in this screen capture because the book is not yet public.) The list on the right shows all the previous versions, any of which you can go back and look at - and you can also see what changed between versions and who changed it. If you want to retrieve something the way it looked in an earlier draft, you just access the version history from the File menu, as shown below. We resolved most issues asynchronously this way, making decisions quickly without the need for extended discussions.ДЄnother advantage is the unlimited versioning feature of Google Docs. This allowed them to see and comment on each otherвЂ™s ideas, including a productive set of comment threads on issues any one of us had raised. First off, both of my collaborators could see each otherвЂ™s edits, which appear as redlines, similar to Microsoft WordвЂ™s markup. My collaborators reviewed the document in вЂњSuggestingвЂќ mode, which you can access by clicking on the pencil at the right side of the Google Docs menu.

IвЂ™d include links for references and a few comments within the document on places where I had questions or needed to call attention to a terminological or structural question. In this case, IвЂ™d typically write a chapter, then email a reviewersвЂ™ memo to the other authors with a link to it. Instead, you usually have one person write a chapter or similar sized-chunk, and the other people review it. With three authors, you donвЂ™t write by having everyone pile into a document at the same time. IвЂ™ve written about Google Docs for real-time collaboration on title brainstorms, for example. But because my collaborators were writing in Google Drive, I tried that. I had grown used to using Microsoft Word for drafts, because it has finer control over formatting than Google does. This might tell me that IвЂ™ve got it mentioned in an interview and in drafts of Chapters 3 and 8, so I can track down the original source of the information and look for potentially duplicated content or examples.

If I want to find everything we have written on, say, Disney, I just type it into the search box on Google Drive. This is not just convenient, itвЂ™s a backup in case something fails. In additional to the obvious collaboration benefits of this shared space, it provides two excellent features.ДЇirst, all this material is also stored locally since my laptop mirrors Google Drive. The Source Material folder includes white papers and PDFs that IвЂ™ve downloaded. I also take notes on all our collaboration calls (in General notes), and we have spreadsheets from the data surveys theyвЂ™ve done.

As you can see, this creates a lightweight, simple way to organize everything.ДЄll the interviews are in one place, the chapter drafts are in another, and the past reference material is under вЂњProposal Drafts.вЂќ The interview folder also includes audio recordings (from Zoom, mostly) from our calls. Instead, we all work off of a Google drive folder. My collaborators and I work for different organizations, so we canвЂ™t count on shared Intranet space. Using Google Drive for shared access to research

Here are a few things I learned about the superiority of Google Docs and Google Sheets for collaborative authoring. On this project, IвЂ™m the principal writer they are my clients. IвЂ™ve been working on a collaborative book project with two other authors.

How to use google docs to write a book