[jtanderson]

It works quite well, in my case. There is only one pitfall: conflicts. Since two edits on the same line become a conflict, this can easily cause headaches unless some sort of agreements or conventions are in place. For somebody acquainted with git, it's not bad, but typically if somebody doesn't use git, svn, etc. and they have a conflict, the merge process is far from painless. The best way to avoid this is simply to add newlines as frequently as possible, after every sentence as a minimum; also, have some sort of understanding with your co-authors about who is working on which sections. This may or may not be easy for you, depending on the technical content of your writing.

For my own notes and papers, it's great in all the ways that git is supposed to be: keeps me organized, keeps things backed up (I use BitBucket, free unlimited collaborators with a .edu address), and makes me feel better because I have more control over the whole process (as opposed to Dropbox or Google Drive).