(I worked on iBooks for the Mac like 15 years ago—it's where I got to dive into the ePub format. A lot has changed in the standard since I am sure.)
EDIT: looks like EPUB3 has a "paginated" mode as well as more sophisticated layout tags.
Also appears to have support for ruby and vertical writing modes. This was not yet supported in WebKit when I worked on iBooks. Somehow, this white guy from Kansas (who knows no language other than English) got tapped to implement the vertical TOC for Asian languages. Also tasked with annotating the ePUB pages to display (also vertical) ruby text…
As an output format it’s ok, but as an input format, it’s almost as bad as PDF.
I've read more (meaningful) text on PG than any other digital platform. Huge fan. Thanks for all the work and for keeping it clean and free
And as another person noted, the vast majority of books have HTML, EPUB, Mobi formats. We are also looking at both KEPUB (Kobo) and PDF which will probably come in the future.
I like a styled formatted book—would prefer PDFs. (I know, not a popular format apparently.)
I like the idea of Project Gutenberg but guess I found book scans on archive.org my preference.
My go-to example is Lewis Carroll's "Through the Looking Glass" with the fantastic art of John Tenniel and Carroll's sometimes creative formatting of the prose…
I see they (Project Gutenberg) have ePub now, which can be good if well done.
(If not well done it can be a kind of mess. Re-flowable "HTML", paginated… Anyone ever try to print a long web page and did you enjoy the result? Perhaps that is as much on the ePub reader though.)