Last week I attended a Christmas lunch for publishing's digerati organised by The Literary Platform's Sophie Rochester. Much of the festive talk was about how much has changed over the past year and how digital was now being taken much more seriously in-house. As OUP's Ernst Kallus said at the FutureBook conference in November, we need to stop thinking about 'digital publishing' and think of it as 'publishing'.

"Wake up and smell the XML," was Kallus' memorable phrase.

The point is that the e-book is here: and it is a viable (even economically viable) alternative to the p-book.

The key events of 2010 are now like a stepping stone to where we are today: the announcement of the iPad, and the iBookstore at the beginning of the year, and its belated arrival in the UK; the adoption of the agency model in the US soon after; the launch of Kindle's UK store-front; the announcement, finally, of Google eBooks.

Of course, as Dominique Raccah's blog is honest enough to address, there will be mistakes along the way. The enhanced e-book model feels like one to me, and I worry about these lovely apps that keep being announced. Will they find an audience?

Publishers are actually very skilled at packaging content in different formats, where they lack skills is knowing what the audience actually wants, and so once again I repeat my call to make sure booksellers are brought into the equation. They know book-lovers, they meet them every day, publishers don't.

In truth though, this is a manner aside, to a conversation that is now only moving in one direction. 2011 will see the infiltration of digital reading within the populace at large: we will see more and more people reading on digital devices. It's the moment publishing's digerati has been waiting for. And let's get the message out loud and clear: the UK book business is ready for this: there will be more experimentation, more failures, but from this an economic model will emerge that pins digital to publishing.

See you in the New Year!