What Distributed Proofreaders Canada does

Distributed Proofreaders Canada (DPC) is a volunteer-run nonprofit organization founded in 2007 by Michael Shepard and David Jones to digitize public domain books, with a particular focus on Canadiana and works by authors who died before 1972, exploiting the more permissive Canadian copyright framework. The organization operates a web-based collaborative proofreading platform that breaks each book into individual pages and presents the OCR-generated text alongside the original scanned image, allowing volunteers to compare and correct errors directly in the browser. Each book passes through two proofreading rounds and two formatting rounds, with every page verified by a second volunteer before progressing to a post-processing stage that assembles the final ebook for publication to the FadedPage archive, with some titles also cross-posted to Project Gutenberg Canada and Project Gutenberg US. New contributors are onboarded through BEGIN projects with mentor feedback, and the underlying software is released under GNU GPL v2 with source code available on GitHub.

The organization serves two principal user populations: general readers who freely download completed ebooks from FadedPage, and volunteer contributors who perform the proofreading, formatting, and operational work. As of mid-2026, the site reports 77 monthly active volunteers, 5,947 completed Gold titles, 385 Silver titles in post-processing, and 1,252 Bronze titles in active proofreading, for a cumulative total of 7,991 titles preserved. DPC has no commercial revenue model; all services are free, all labor is unpaid, and the only monetization-adjacent dimension is the optional, non-paid volunteer engagement pipeline. The organization is not a typical investment target: it has no shareholders, no funding rounds, and no equity instrument, and the platform exists to serve a cultural-preservation mission rather than to generate financial returns.

Name

Distributed Proofreaders Canada

Legal name

Distributed Proofreaders Canada

Website

https://pgdpcanada.net

Company type

Private

Founded year

2007

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

1–10 employees

Short description

Distributed Proofreaders Canada is a volunteer-run nonprofit that operates a web-based collaborative proofreading platform to digitize public domain books, particularly Canadiana, publishing completed ebooks free of charge through the FadedPage archive.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Digital Library / Public Domain Publishing

NAICS

Document Preparation Services (56141)

akta.pro primary industry

Editorial & Production Services (Copyediting, Proofreading, Formatting, Typesetting) (MPAJAJAG)

akta.pro secondary industry

E-book Subscription & Bundling Services (MPAJAMAB)

Keywords

• Crowdsourced proofreading
• Ebook digitization
• Public domain books
• Volunteer transcription
• Canadian literary archive

GTM type

B2C

Offering type

Digital Commerce or Content

Cost components

Technology or R&D, Operations, Infrastructure

Revenue model

1. No Revenue Generation: Distributed Proofreaders Canada is a volunteer-run nonprofit organization. All proofreading, management, and development work is performed by unpaid volunteers. The service is provided free of charge to the public.

Pricing tiers

Go-to-market motion1 record

Distribution channels1 record

Marketing channels3 records

Core offering

Distributed Proofreaders Canada operates a web-based collaborative proofreading platform that breaks digitized public domain books into individual pages, allowing multiple volunteers to proofread the same book simultaneously. The platform displays page text alongside image files for easy comparison and correction, progressing books through two proofreading rounds and two formatting rounds before post-processing and submission to the FadedPage eBook archive.

Product overview

Distributed Proofreaders Canada (DPC) operates a single unified web-based proofreading platform for digitizing public domain books. The platform consists of the core proofreading interface plus multiple workflow stages (Bronze, Silver, Gold) that books progress through, along with supporting features like Smooth Reading for final review and BEGIN projects for mentor-guided training. The software itself is open source (GNU GPL v2). All products are free volunteer-driven services, not commercial offerings.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Products and services

• DPC Proofreading Platform A web-based collaborative proofreading platform that breaks digitized public domain books into individual pages, allowing multiple volunteers to proofread the same book simultaneously. The platform displays page text alongside image files for comparison and correction, progressing books through two proofreading rounds and two formatting rounds before post-processing.
• DPC Open Source Software The underlying software powering the DPC proofreading platform, licensed under GNU GPL v2. Source code is publicly available on GitHub for community use and development.
• Gold E-Texts (Completed eBooks) Books that have completed all phases of proofreading, formatting, and post-processing and have been submitted to FadedPage.com for public download. As of July 2026, 5,947 titles have reached this stage.

Quantifiable outcome

• 7,991 titles preserved and counting

Segments2 records

Ideal customer profiles2 records

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

No

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Feature2 records

Partnerships

Three partnerships are on record, tiered core and minor.

• FadedPagecoreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 1 January 2007DPC produces ebooks specifically for posting to FadedPage archive. This is DPC's primary output destination, where completed books are submitted for public access.
• Distributed Proofreaders International (DP)coreStrategic or Co-development PartnerDPC was inspired by Distributed Proofreaders International, which originally conceived methods to prepare texts for Project Gutenberg. DPC follows similar methodologies.
• Project GutenbergminorStrategic or Co-development PartnerDPC indirectly supports Project Gutenberg through its digitization work. Some completed DPC books may be posted to Project Gutenberg Canada and Project Gutenberg US.

Scale indicators4 records

Recent moves5 records

Expansion highlights4 records

Direct peers

• Librivox: A volunteer-driven project producing free public-domain audiobooks. Shares the same volunteer crowdsourcing model and free-access mission for public-domain literary works, but in audio rather than ebook form.
• Wikisource: A volunteer-driven, crowdsourced digital library of public-domain source texts. Operates with a similar distributed proofreading/transcription model and shares the mission of preserving literary works in accessible digital form.
• Standard Ebooks: Produces high-quality, carefully typeset public-domain ebooks using volunteer effort and automation. Operates with a similar mission of free public-domain literary preservation, with more emphasis on typography and design polish.
• Project Gutenberg: The flagship free public-domain ebook repository. DPC's books feed into Project Gutenberg Canada and Project Gutenberg US, making it both a contributor and a direct functional peer in the free public-domain ebook distribution space.
• Project Gutenberg Canada: The Canadian affiliate of Project Gutenberg. DPC directly contributes ebooks to this archive and shares its Canadian-focused preservation mission, making it a near-identical peer in scope and geography.
• Distributed Proofreaders International: The original crowdsourced proofreading site that inspired DPC. DP uses the same page-by-page multi-round methodology to produce ebooks primarily for Project Gutenberg. It is the closest functional and methodological peer to DPC.
• FadedPage: Founded by the same community in 2012, FadedPage is the primary archive for DPC's digitized Canadiana. They are an integrated partner-publisher in the same volunteer digital preservation ecosystem.

Broad incumbents

• Internet Archive: A much larger digital library preserving books, audio, video, and web content. Operates in the same public-domain/preservation space with vastly broader scope and resources, including book digitization at industrial scale.
• HathiTrust Digital Library: A large-scale collaborative digital preservation repository founded by academic and research institutions. Comparable in mission (preserving digitized books for access and scholarship) but operates at institutional scale rather than volunteer scale.
• Google Books: The dominant commercial platform for digitized books. Mass-digitizes public domain works at industrial scale with OCR-based workflows. A broad incumbent in the same digitization space, with vastly greater resources.

Market position

Strengths3 records

Weaknesses4 records

Competitive moat4 records

Key risks5 records

Key highlights6 records

Customer concentration

• GitHubgithub.com/Distributed-Proofreaders/dpc/commits/master
• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/distributed-proofreaders-canada

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles2 records

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about Distributed Proofreaders Canada