Draftin.com makes it easy to write books online

I am always on the lookout for new online writing tools, and today's is called Draftin. It's a project from Nathan Kontny that focuses on version control while you are writing. It brings a great technique for keeping track of versions of what you write over from the programming world and applies it to being an author.

Here are a few excerpts from his about page, which give you a feel for the spirit of where Draftin is coming from:

You don't need version control software; you need to find all the things you've written without fear...

You don't need real time collaboration software; you need a bigger audience for your writing...

I'm working on Draft to provide what you need. What I need...

-Nate

I just took a few highlights, but you can read more here. Any new software for writing that talks about dealing with all the fear that surrounds writing is exciting to me.

So what does Draftin do?

Version Control: It keeps track of every version, or draft, of what you are writing. If you host your writing on their site, when someone makes edits or suggestions for edits, you can look at their suggestions side by side to the original and choose what to keep and what to ignore.

Old Work: They make it easy for a writer to find a previous draft of something written. Where a program like Google Docs/Drive will eliminate the old version entirely, Draftin keeps it as an iteration, similar to Github. If that was all too tech-y, the point is that Draftin will keep tabs on every draft of your writing automatically.

Importing: Draftin allows a writer to import notes from places like Evernote, Dropbox, or Google Drive (among others) so that you can centralize the bits and pieces of what you're working on and deal with it in an environment that is tailored to long-form content writing.

Does this sound like something you would try? Does it solve a problem you have?

Image courtesy of Draftin.com homepage screenshot