That's nonsense. Their are whole industries that could use better collaborative tools (such as the book publishing industry). Have you tried writing a book? The tools are so limited.
Google docs for example is not a great tool for writing books, in fact there are very few tools that are particularly nice to use that are web based and strong on the collaborative front.
I think the problem perhaps with Editorially is too much pressure to get things going early. If there's 10+ people with salaries, sales better be good. I think a bootstrapping approach or an open source approach a la WordPress would be much more viable. Editorially seems to have only failed because of their specific criteria, not because there's isn't a need for a better tool.
No, I don't think there is much of a demand, at least not enough to sustain an entire business. You would need to be pulling in serious money from publishers, and on top of that, you're trying to change a system that largely already works. I've published myself, and e-mailing drafts was fine. The only times I've ever seen collaborative documents being used by average people were a) real-time coding interviews, and b) filling out forms. People would not be willing to pay money in either case, no matter how good it is.
Google docs for example is not a great tool for writing books, in fact there are very few tools that are particularly nice to use that are web based and strong on the collaborative front.
I think the problem perhaps with Editorially is too much pressure to get things going early. If there's 10+ people with salaries, sales better be good. I think a bootstrapping approach or an open source approach a la WordPress would be much more viable. Editorially seems to have only failed because of their specific criteria, not because there's isn't a need for a better tool.