
Editorially is shutting down - robertwalsh0
http://stet.editorially.com/articles/goodbye/
======
guynamedloren
Shameless plug: I'm building Penflip.com, an alternative to Editorially. It
has a clean markdown writing interface and git for version control. It's like
GitHub, but for writing. I quit my job 5 months ago and have been working on
this full time ever since, 100% bootstrapped. I think the space still has tons
of untapped potential.

[http://www.penflip.com](http://www.penflip.com)

~~~
pknight
I've looked at your project for the purposes of writing a book but it feels
like the technology should be able to do so much more and make things easier.

These were my initial penflip impressions: * I'm ambivalent to markup, it's
not a big feature to me. It's another thing to get used to when I'm really
looking for book writing to make things easier straight away. * It makes
certain actions more tedious. I want to be able to write subsections, move 'm
around if need be. I don't want to be tasked with creating files for chapters
and what not. * It's far too technical looking. It's too much like Git. Git is
great for code, I love it for that. But Git is pretty involved. Writing should
be made easy. The only thing hard about writing should be the writing itself.
I don't want to read a manual to learn how to use the tool. If I'm writing a
book, all I need to know is how do I create chapter 1 and start typing from
there. Everything else becomes information overload. Surely there must be a
nicer way to get the benefits of Git for writing but for an audience that
doesn't want to think technical.

I do recognize your project is still in the early stages and you've purposely
kept your feature list small to begin with. I hope it becomes something huge
and I agree with you the market is there.

~~~
guynamedloren
Thanks for the feedback, and for checking out Penflip. Usability is definitely
not a trivial task to solve, especially while trying to maintain all of the
version control power that comes with git.

That said, when was the last time you played around with Penflip? I've
received lots of similar feedback (too technical, too hard to use, cluttered
UI) so I'm continually stripping down the interface and simplifying
everything. In the past few weeks the writing interface has been cleaned up
quite a bit. Still has a ways to go, but it's getting there.

------
JoshConley
If you've used Editorially and enjoyed it, I'd like to recommend my own
application that I am currently developing called Typewrite (
[https://typewrite.io](https://typewrite.io) ). Though it's only been in
development for about a month an a half, it is relatively inexpensive to run
and I don't plan on shutting it down anytime soon.

It has live collaboration like Google Docs, and a simple interface like
Byword, iA Writer, or Editorially. I'm working behind the scenes to add
features and documentation and plan on releasing updates for it every so
often.

If you are interested in seeing why I created Typewrite, please read the first
blog post at: [http://blog.typewrite.io/2014/simplicity-in-real-
time/](http://blog.typewrite.io/2014/simplicity-in-real-time/)

------
frade33
My email to mandy when i signed up:

>It seems awesome. However earlier I had asked, How this is different than
Google Docs in terms of 'competition' and features.

Her Response: >The principal difference is that we're focused exclusively on
the editorial process, while Google Docs also aims to do a lot of other
things. I don't have a feature comparison handy, but you might be interested
in this article from FastCo: [http://www.fastcodesign.com/1672260/editorially-
wants-to-red...](http://www.fastcodesign.com/1672260/editorially-wants-to-
redesign-writing-for-the-web)

Point, I was not convinced, this or any other App of this kind, is going to
stand the competition (from Google). Let alone stand out.

~~~
coldcode
People used to say the same thing about Microsoft and Office.

~~~
georgemcbay
Yeah but Microsoft Office had a clear attack vector: it cost a significant
amount of money and you could "beat" it for some (but not nearly all) people
by being "good enough" and free.

Google Docs is free (yeah, you're "Google's product" yadda, yadda, but hardly
anyone cares about that, they just know they aren't paying for it) which makes
it much harder to attack unless your product is substantially and demonstrably
better than it in at least some very important areas.

------
colinbartlett
What was this? Can someone explain it?

These shutdown notices should have a required synopsis of the service so I
know what I will be missing out on.

~~~
cordite
I used it, it wasn't live like Google docs, but everyone involved could still
contribute to a markdown document.

An HTML view is available for every document.

------
ig1
Seems strange to shut-down the business after only four months post-public
launch.

It feels like in this space your best options are to go free and push for
scale or to go after premium markets.

Writers tend not to have huge budgets, but professionals such as PR teams and
lawyers also need heavyweight tracking/collaboration tools and have the money
to pay for a solution.

~~~
shortformblog
This is exactly what I was hoping would happen. The thing is, the problem they
were trying to solve is a big one for organizations where a lot of writing
gets done. But for whatever reason, the product was focused on individual
writers.

------
dannyaway
Alternatives:

\- Draft - [http://draftin.com/](http://draftin.com/) \- Penflip -
[http://penflip.com/](http://penflip.com/) \- Typewrite -
[https://typewrite.io](https://typewrite.io) \- StackEdit -
[https://stackedit.io/](https://stackedit.io/)

There's also Quip, but its focused on mobile so doesn't fit well in this list.
I did a pretty deep breakdown on two of four above (along with Editorially)
earlier this year - [https://zapier.com/blog/collaborative-writing-tools-
editoria...](https://zapier.com/blog/collaborative-writing-tools-editorially-
draft-penflip/)

------
adrianh
Very surprising to see this happen so soon. I'm a happy user of Draft -- made
by HN (and Y Combinator album) Nate Kontny.
[https://draftin.com/](https://draftin.com/)

------
interstitial
There site is already in postmortem, I would have liked to seen what they had
built. We learn more when we see awesome ideas that don't gain traction, it's
often depressing though. I also see a trend of all these assets just
vanishing. Even when sites opensource after failure, seldom anything comes up
it. I will proffer the uncomfortable suggestions that the balley-hooed
software practices, despite the back-patting, are not uncoupled and modular.
In fact, we have reached the age of massive coupling in the full stack, even
the deployment.

------
shortformblog
We had been using this in earnest at my company since August. It's basically
the best tool of its kind—and unlike most other tools of its kind, our copy
editors loved it. The thing it was missing was team-editing features. But it
had the editing process, which is the one thing keeping people with Word,
down.

There are a lot of publishing houses that could use something like this.
Editorial workflow is a big weak point as we switch from doing a lot of things
in print to doing a lot of things on the Web.

~~~
emhart
Take a look at Draft:

[http://draftin.com](http://draftin.com)

~~~
shortformblog
I'm familiar—I did a lot of testing. The problem with Draft, IMHO, is that it
has a slightly higher complexity level, though the product itself is probably
Editorially's closest match on the feature ratio. I need to be able to sell
this to the average writer, and that's not always easy if the complexity level
is too high, alas.

~~~
emhart
I completely understand that. It definitely has a higher intimidation factor
than Editorially ever did.

------
WadeF
Really bummed to see Editorially go. We tried a lot of different writing tools
at Zapier and it was definitely the best for handling the editorial process.

Some potential replacements for those looking are Google Docs, Draft, Penflip,
or Quip. Here's a big write up on the differences between those tools:

[https://zapier.com/blog/collaborative-writing-tools-
editoria...](https://zapier.com/blog/collaborative-writing-tools-editorially-
draft-penflip/)

------
bowerbird
gosh, there's so much i could say here; let me bullet-list:

b1. businesses have a need for collaborative writing

b2. businesses are mired in their ms-word mindset

b3. businesses will pay for a tool they need...

b4. ...unless they can get it for free from google

b5. i don't care about businesses; thus ends this list

 __*

w1. i care about writers, individuals exercising creativity

w2. writers don't write collaboratively; editors can suck it

w3. writers certainly won't pay for a collaborative tool

w4. it's highly doubtful writers will pay for any tool...

w5. ...but most especially if they can get it for free

w6. writers won't even _use_ an over-engineered tool

w7. writers want the tool to just get out of the darn way

w8. writers are quite happy with a empty field to write in

w7. editorially was over-engineered, and is penflip too

w8. draft-in started just right, but is now over-engineered

w9. writers don't trust storing their stuff "somewhere else"

w10. version-tracking is great, but not the be-all, end-all

w11. github? order-of-magnitude over-engineered for writers

 __*

c1. communication is pervasive (facetime, hangouts, twitter)

c2. collaboration doesn't need to be built into every tool

c3. to the extent it is needed, use stuff like sugarbox.io

c4. javascript writing tools will be beer- and speech-free

c5. i can point to a dozen, and release my own next week

c6. so nobody is gonna build a business on writing tools

c7. html is so old-fashioned, with
[http://strapdownjs.com](http://strapdownjs.com)

------
wpietri
I would be most grateful if the people involved in this did a little public
post-mortem. One of the ideas near the top of my queue is related to writing,
so I'd really benefit from hearing about their explorations. And I imagine
there are many others that feel the same way.

------
robertwalsh0
So sad to hear this. This is one of my fave online tools.

~~~
freebs
You should try [https://draftin.com/](https://draftin.com/). For what little
writing I've done, it always seemed to work well. Right from the beginning it
worked well with exporting and publishing, which were my main concerns.

~~~
emhart
+1 - my favorite tool. I got into the Editorially beta just after, like,
within a couple days, I began using Draft. Couldn't tear myself away.

------
JustinBrown
This was the best collaborative writing app I've ever used. My heart hurts.

