it will be worth it to reformat as necessary
I think so, too. I noticed Kindle is already trending toward what B&N does: creating graphically-based eBooks with fancier building tools (similar to you Flash freaks out there--ha ha, kidding!). I think the text-based eBook is still going to survive, though. People don't want to have to keep resizing their frame to scanned images. The clarity of text on a device has a neon quality that impresses me more, somehow. I find I read much faster on my Kindle and iPhone than I do a regular book. I still love books, but they're becoming more like disabled old friends (with innumerable protuding post-its).
One not-so-obvious source on the Cummings eBook was UCLA's library. When I started out I noticed a page and poem was missing from the Internet-archived .PDF version of
Eight Harvard Poets. Easy to detect if you ask me because, besides noticing page numbers, it was also in the TOC. This scanned version had seeped out (beginning at the University of Michigan, I think) to every other electric avenue…
…and then I took it higher.
(Sorry…sometimes you gotta laugh at yourself.)
So, I bought something from Amazon (for $12!) that looked like a print-on-demand of a transcribed
Eight Harvard Poets. It turns out the type-set was horrible (again, like it was a text-dump of an OCR scan), and even IT was missing the same page/poem--telling me the editor had just copied and pasted the text from the scanned PDF from Adobe--and then decided to sell it for $12 a pop! I've never felt so gypped.
So, having the fortune of working at UCLA during my secretarial tenure, I knew librarians offered copy services to the public for their special collections. I found a phone number, made the call, found out they had the original book, and paid $15 to have the single missing page scanned and emailed to me. Easy peasy. Needless to say, both the $12 and $15 turned out to be good investments. Both made me think about the reliability of sources.
Incidentally, the poem that is missing from the Internet sources is
The Lover Speaks, one of my favorites:
YOUR little voice
__________Over the wires came leaping.
and I felt suddenly
dizzy
_______With the jostling and shouting of merry flowers
wee skipping high-heeled flames
courtesied before my eyes
_______________or twinkling over to my side
Looked up
with impertinently exquisite faces
floating hands were laid upon me
I was whirled and tossed into delicious dancing
up
Up
with the pale important
____________stars and the Humourous
_________________________moon
dear girl
How I was crazy how I cried when I heard
_____________________over_____time
and tide and death
leaping
Sweetly
_____your voice.