ABSTRACT
Collaborative virtual writing is a practice shared among an increasing number of individuals and organizations. This chapter analyzes the experiences of two editors and one writer who collaborated virtually on a book project involving 22 writers affiliated either with academia or industry. The collaborative process revealed that the communicative and file-sharing affordances of virtual technologies alone were insufficient to alleviate persistent conflicts between academic and industry professionals about the book’s content and style. Ongoing rhetorical analyses of this collaborative process and the tensions that emerged gave rise to key principles of a practical rhetoric for virtual collaborative writing examined in this chapter.
