The good folks at Editorially announced last week that the collaborative writing service would by shutting down May 30th, surprising many of its users and followers. In many ways it is the way the end has seemingly come about that has caught people off-guard. Editorially appeared to have everything going for it—an all-star team, a solution to a common problem, a solid brand and perhaps most importantly, an abundance of glowing recommendations. I saw nothing but exceedingly positive feedback from everyone who used it, and with good reason. It is easily the best writing tool I’ve used for managing drafts and versions. It made collaborating with multiple authors easy, where it was once a nightmare and greatly streamlined the editing process.

There will always be a lot of second-guessing and opinions flying around in a situation like this—half-baked ideas on what could have been done, etc. After all, this looked like a product destined to make a dent, either through its own success or bolted on to a bigger player through an acquisition. I, too, wonder what could have been, but I tend to think of what could been done by us legions of Editorially fans. Who knows? Maybe nothing. But maybe we should be reminded that so much in our industry is ephemeral and that we should try to evangelize the services we use and enjoy and help when we can—through feedback or word-of-mouth advertising, if not monetarily. We should remember that it’s hard to make things. Really hard. And when people are willing to take a chance and try to solve some problem by building an app, piece of furniture, whatever, they probably deserve more help than they will get.

The Editorially team are a group of extremely talented and genuinely good people. I wish them the best of luck with whatever they choose to do next.

Directions to export documents are available here: https://editorially.com/help/export