diff --git a/MANIFEST.in b/MANIFEST.in
index f66e42ae3..ef75112e7 100644
--- a/MANIFEST.in
+++ b/MANIFEST.in
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-include README
+include README.rst
 include AUTHORS
 include INSTALL
 include LICENSE
diff --git a/README b/README
deleted file mode 100644
index d79e46bc2..000000000
--- a/README
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,4 +0,0 @@
-This is Scrapy, an opensource screen scraping framework written in Python.
-
-For more info visit the project home page at http://scrapy.org
-
diff --git a/README.rst b/README.rst
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..dc4eeadd7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/README.rst
@@ -0,0 +1,61 @@
+======
+Scrapy
+======
+
+Overview
+========
+
+Scrapy is a fast high-level screen scraping and web crawling framework, used to
+crawl websites and extract structured data from their pages. It can be used for
+a wide range of purposes, from data mining to monitoring and automated testing.
+
+For more information including a list of features check the Scrapy homepage at:
+http://scrapy.org
+
+Requirements
+============
+
+* Python 2.6 or up
+* Works on Linux, Windows, Mac OSX, BSD
+
+Install
+=======
+
+The quick way::
+
+    pip install scrapy
+
+For more details see the install section in the documentation:
+http://doc.scrapy.org/en/latest/intro/install.html
+
+Releases
+========
+
+You can download the latest stable and development releases from:
+http://scrapy.org/download/
+
+Documentation
+=============
+
+Documentation is available online at http://doc.scrapy.org/ and in the ``docs``
+directory.
+
+Community (blog, twitter, mail list, IRC)
+=========================================
+
+See http://scrapy.org/community/
+
+Contributing
+============
+
+See http://doc.scrapy.org/en/latest/contributing.html
+
+Companies using Scrapy
+======================
+
+See http://scrapy.org/companies/
+
+Commercial Support
+==================
+
+See http://scrapy.org/support/
diff --git a/debian/scrapy.docs b/debian/scrapy.docs
index 55bc0a63d..c19ffba4d 100644
--- a/debian/scrapy.docs
+++ b/debian/scrapy.docs
@@ -1,2 +1,2 @@
-README
+README.rst
 AUTHORS
diff --git a/setup.cfg b/setup.cfg
index 406666bc6..aabaaed08 100644
--- a/setup.cfg
+++ b/setup.cfg
@@ -1,5 +1,5 @@
 [bdist_rpm]
-doc_files = docs examples extras AUTHORS INSTALL LICENSE README
+doc_files = docs examples extras AUTHORS INSTALL LICENSE README.rst
 install-script = extras/rpm-install.sh
 
 [bdist_wininst]