Yesterday I was at the London Book Fair. Judging by all the noise in book publishing around ebooks and digital platforms I was half-expecting the entire thing to be comprised of a giant iPad and a giant Kindle.

How delightful to find it full of books. Real, actual books. Big books, small books, colourful books, black-and-white books, modern recreations of medieval books... I imagine every type of book under the sun was there somewhere.

Naturally I made a beeline to the publishing solutions zone to find printers to bother.

First-time Book Fair exhibitor Imprint Digital of Exeter was showing off its new online price calculator which makes it easy for publishers to get instant pricing. It has clever features such as the option for "randomly placed colour pages" within a book.

Berforts was promoting its union with Information Press and the merits of British book printing, and had a nifty book giveaway of its own that's a guide to book printing and self publishing. It includes samples of different paper types along with black-and-white and colour images, and pages of useful advice for self publishers.

MD Gerald White imparted an interesting snippet about a new customer who approached Berforts after being successful in ebooks, saying "now we need to print some proper ones". Rah to that.

All in all the book vibe seemed pretty positive. As I walked past the enormous graphic of JK Rowling on the Little, Brown booth I made sure to genuflect in anticipation of a bumper upcoming print run for The Casual Vacancy. Please let it be a tome, not a novella.