Need advice: maintaining project materials for a group

[howman]

Hi all,

I am working with a few people to write a book. I could use some advice on the best way to manage and organize the project materials and maintain version control.

For project materials I see the following:

1. MS Word documents (a main document with the text of the book plus documents submitted by contributors)
2. Paper notes
3. Project plan/Work assignments (probably MS Project but might be an Excel spreadsheet or Visio diagram)
4. Digital images (to be inserted in the Word doc and used for the cover art)

The biggest challenge I see is making sure everyone’s work gets incorporated in the main document and changes by one person do not get overwritten by another. Another challenge is making sure everyone is working with the latest versions of the document, project plan, and images.

As an added twist, contributors are located in different cities and will be working at different times.

Any suggestions?

Thanks!