Writing Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for the craft of professional writing, including fiction, non-fiction, technical, scholarly, and commercial writing. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
We are a group of people who want to write collaborative a book, but since we are based in different locations, how can we go on with our writing?
Can you suggest a writing tool that might help us track each other's work remotely? Are there tips that may help us in writing efficiently?
Those two things should get you there because Google Docs will even allow multiple users to edit a document at the same time and show the live edits (in real-time) which are done by each user.
It will also allow users to read / edit any content in the directory so each writer can work at her own pace and examine any of the documents.
You can also turn on revision watch so you can see who made revisions to the document and notes can be added by the revising user.
I did not experience it myself, but Lyx, one of my favorite writing tool, is able to use some version control tools widely used for writing software, like the famous Git. Those tools are powerful, tested by millions of coders everyday, and using them open the door to many other tools. Of course, if you have no experience with them, you may found them over complicated for your purpose.
An simpler alternative is Etherpad which is free (as in speech) and is comparable to Google Docs. There is some public instances running in the wild.
