Standard eBooks: High-Quality, Free, Public Domain eBooks

The Standard eBooks Project is a new volunteer-driven, not-for-profit project that produces carefully-formatted, open-source, and free public domain ebooks. They improve upon the work of sites like Project Gutenberg and HathiTrust in the following ways:

• Modern & consistent typography
• Proofreading with careful corrections
• Light modernization of language (spelling, hyphenation)
• Additional metadata
• Ready to download in .epub (iBooks), Kobo, and Kindle native formats.

Basically, it makes these public domain books easier to download and more pleasurable to read. The only drawback so far is that the library is somewhat limited. You can also contribute in a variety of ways, from reporting errors to proofing entire books. Found via Daring Fireball.

The .epub format works with iBooks and most other readers, so you can download directly from iPad or iPhone. If you prefer to read on an Amazon Kindle, visit the website using your built-in web browser and download the .azw3 file directly. This saves you the step of having to transfer files from your computer.

Another source of free eBooks with improved formatting is Feedbooks.