I'm curious how Paizo handles collaboration in the office as well as with writers and staff that work outside of the office. Do you use a set of commercial collaboration tools such as SharePoint, Microsoft OneNote, EverNote, Google Docs?
A few of us are at the ground breaking level of creating a small publishing company to produce some material and we are considering how best to collaborate with one another. Sharing files, version control, file syncing, tasks, notes, commenting and conversations, these are all things that we are wanting in a suite of tools. How does Paizo handle such things?
Thanks for any helpful tips!
Creative Director
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Our writers generally use Microsoft Word, although they're free to use whatever composition software they wish to use. We generally communicate with our freelancers via email, but also talk in person (usually at conventions) now and then, or even chat via IM.
We don't use collaborative software at all, though. Each author writes their assignment alone based on an outline we supply to them. The second step of a product's journey into publication is development—that's when someone in house takes the author's manuscript (or in the case of a book with multiple authors, all of their manuscripts) and then develops that manuscript—this is a combination of editing, revising, and rewriting to make the book as great as it can be before it goes to get laid out and then have its actual editorial passes.
So, there IS collaboration—between the freelance author and the in-house developer. That collaboration happens in sequence rather than simultaneously, is all.
Yup, as James said, we primarily rely on Microsoft Word to outline, develop, and edit freelancer turnovers. Once a turnover has gone through this process, the art folks use their mad skills to stick the text and accompanying art into Adobe InDesign. People who deal only with text (developers, editors—basically everyone but art people) work with Adobe InCopy to further edit things that have been laid out. We communicate with each other in-person and via email/IM to coordinate things in-house.
We rarely use integrated comment features or the like with our electronic files, and more often simply write notes on the printed-out documents and pass them along if we want other people to see them. That said, it is extremely helpful when freelancers include comments on their Word doc turnovers, because this helps us figure out if they're snagging a rule or piece of canon from somewhere that we don't immediately recognize.
Pretty basic practice, but it works so well largely because it's so simple!
Our process, as James mentioned, is very sequential. We were just working on a product that was more complicated (as far as changes from multiple people coming in at the same time) than any of the others I've seen since I started here, and were still able to handle it by email. We do use tracking sheets to keep track of who's edited what, deadlines, etc.
In other companies I've been at, where the process was a lot less sequential (such as having multiple writers, multiple editors, game designers, audio directors, developers and project managers all making changes to a particular document in the same time period), using software that allows checkouts and version control becomes crucial. Everyone has their own particular favorite, and they each have strengths and weaknesses.
However, since you're saying it's a small publishing company, I'd say the most important thing isn't actually what particular tools you use: it's having a well-designed process that everyone who's involved understands thoroughly, and ensuring that it is used consistently, even when it seems unnecessary or even a bit silly. (Small projects may not seem like they need a strong process at first, but if they unexpectedly turn into big/complicated ones and you haven't laid the groundwork, they can get problematic in a hurry.)
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Creative Director
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Actually... now that I think of it... we DO have a sort of "collaboration" tool. And that's Incopy/Indesign. This lets us all use one single document to build the final PDF that's then sent to the printer—developers and editors use Incopy, while the art folks use Indesign, but both programs let us work simultaneously on a single book.
But that process does not extend outside of the actual physical building.