Working on a book with 18 other people who are, with two exceptions, scattered across the country is an interesting experience. Not, like, “May you live in interesting times” interesting, but genuinely interesting.
For me, the coolest part was how well it worked — never once did I find myself thinking, “Damn, I wish we were all in the same room right now.” Not that being in the same room wouldn’t have rocked, but not having that option didn’t make the process any less effective or enjoyable.
Our kids will take it for granted, but growing up before there was an Internet I still get all warm and fuzzy about the tools that make this kind of collaboration possible. Without some of these tools, it would have been impossible to produce Eureka.
If you’re thinking about publishing an RPG book of your own, you may dig some of these free resources as much as the Eureka design team did:
- Gmail: OK, fine: novel it ain’t — but Gmail’s approach to threading conversations and tagging messages made long-distance collaboration much, much easier.
- Google Docs: The ability to craft and share documents and spreadsheets online, and update them collectively in real time, was a huge boon. We never relied on GDocs to store the master manuscript, but for bits and pieces and supporting material it was invaluable.
- Dropbox: Later on in the creative process, once the manuscript was hammered out, several of us started using Dropbox to share large files. The free storage provided is plenty, and the live syncing is fantastic: Save a Dropboxed file on your hard drive, and the version housed online is automatically updated as well.
- Free Conf Call: I have no idea how these guys make money, but this service allowed us to host conference calls for free, on-demand, with a consistent call-in number and participant code. In exchange, you have to listen to (drum roll please) a 10-second ad for the service you’re already using before joining the call. Occasional wonkiness, like dialing in and finding some participants in one conference and others in another, is more than made up for by the price tag.
- Google Wave: Can you tell we love Google? When Wave came along, we started using it in parallel with our conference calls. We’d get on a call, start a wave, and use it to take notes and share ideas. When the call ended, we had minutes and notes for anyone who couldn’t attend.
- Mozy: Mozy is the offsite backup service I used to give myself peace of mind about Eureka. They have a free plan (though I pay for more storage), and the service works well: Tell it how often to back up whatever you want (whole hard drive, specific directories, etc.), let it chug through one initial backup, and then it checks for changes and only backs up changed material. With the manuscript safely stored in three places — two live copies, one on my PC and one in Dropbox, plus one daily backup via Mozy — I never worried about losing a year of work.
- Bookland barcode generator: Why pay to get a standardized ISBN/barcode block for the back cover, when this site will do it for free? Works like a charm.
When you don’t have a major publisher’s budget, it’s great to be able to use free tools like these to save money without sacrificing quality — I hope you enjoy them as much as we did!
