I just read about a new web-based collaborative writing tool available at:

http://www.writely.com

Collaboration begins when you enter a document online (similar to a blog post) at the writely.com website. You can also upload Word, HTML, OpenOffice, plain text or image files as well. Once you’re ready to share the document, you enter the email address of those you wish to collaborate with and they will receive a notice with the URL and password to use for logging into the collaboration. The site handles syncing changes made by each collaborator as well as maintains version control.

When the document is ready you can download it into Word or OpenOffice on your own machine for printing etc. and/or you can post it to your blog for community viewing. Writely only supports Firefox and Mozilla on the Mac, for the moment. The service is currently free. Not sure what their business model is but it looks really new and I imagine that they’re still trying to figure it out.

For more info, visit their site. There you’ll find a tutorial and FAQ. Worth a look.