Steve, > All Unleashed books are written by a main author and lots of contributing > authors. However, it's carved up by chapter, so no chapter is collaborative.
While this may well be true in general, the two books I have collaborated on (my only book experience) I contributed to every chapter, writing some sections as well as heavy editing of the content written by the main author (or the other authors). Certainly this wasn't live collaboration, and relied on the track changes features of Word. I have done the same thing with Lyx and co-authoring Technical reports. We also tried a Skype/Google Apps approach for live editing, but it didn't work very well because of how slow the Skype connection was. But this was more of brainstorming exercise trying to flesh out a Report outline. The books are: http://www.amazon.com/Effects-Extensions-Ecology-Statistics-Biology/dp/0387874577/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1285353221&sr=1-1 and http://www.amazon.com/Analysing-Ecological-Statistics-Biology-Health/dp/0387459677/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1285353262&sr=1-2 Graham