Sometimes a confession can also be a portent, depending on who made it.

XY "is sticking to its plans for the Leipzig Book Fair in March", it said on Tuesday, XY "is present at the fair with its own stand", has organized a forum at which "authors from 40 German, present their latest works to Austrian and Swiss publishers”.

Why all that?

Because the fair is "of central importance for the diverse German book and publishing world".

If XY stood for the group of Holtzbrinck publishers, for Rowohlt, Kiepenheuer & Witsch and S. Fischer, then one would not have to worry about the Leipzig Book Fair and could book the ticket to Leipzig.

However, the commitment does not come from any of the large publishing groups, but from the Kurt Wolff Foundation, in which the most important independent publishers in the German-speaking world are organized.

One day after its publication, one day after the foundation's quick "quick survey" of its circle of friends, with the proud result that 85 percent of the publishers surveyed wanted to exhibit their books in Leipzig, the fair announced all events this year as well to cancel - as in 2020 and 2021, including the "Manga-Comic-Con" and "Leipzig reads".

At the end of January, the head of the trade fair, Oliver Zille, had publicly hoped to hold the event in March, always assuming that, firstly, politicians set the course for this, secondly, Corona would allow a trade fair and thirdly, the exhibitors who had expressed an interest in participating did not back down made.

It wasn’t up to Saxony, the state allows trade fairs to be held in its current Corona regulation.

As far as the number of infections is concerned, scientists are forecasting a decline in the numbers after mid-February, which sounded promising for the start of the trade fair on March 17th.

The exhibitors remain.

At the end of January, Zille spoke of a survey among publishers and other potential exhibitors, 75 percent of whom had signaled that they wanted to take part in the fair.

Now they are the ones who – according to the trade fair – brought about the end of the event.

As of last Friday, cancellations increased, and on Monday other publishers followed suit, such as Carlsen, “given the difficult-to-assess development of the pandemic”, they preferred to play it safe, because the “health protection” of the employees came first.

"We are sure that we could have held this trade fair," said Leipzig, on the other hand, with a view to the hygiene concept that has now been developed.

The only question is why the big publishers were so much less confident than the small ones.