SECRET TO THE PERFECT ZOOM BOOKSHELF

Scott Miller writes:

Books by the Foot, a service run by the Maryland-based bookseller Wonder Book, has become a go-to curator of Washington bookshelves, offering precisely what its name sounds like it does. As retro as a shelf of books might seem in an era of flat-panel screens, Books by the Foot has thrived through Democratic and Republican administrations, including that of the book-averse Donald Trump. And this year, the company has seen a twist: When the coronavirus pandemic arrived, Books by the Foot had to adapt to a downturn in office- and hotel-decor business—and an uptick in home-office Zoom backdrops for the talking-head class.

The Wonder Book staff doesn't pry too much into which objective a particular client is after. If an order were to come in for, say, 12 feet of books about politics, specifically with a progressive or liberal tilt—as one did in August—Wonder Book's manager, Jessica Bowman, would simply send one of her more politics-savvy staffers to the enormous box labeled "Politically Incorrect" (the name of Books by the Foot's politics package) to select about 120 books by authors like Hillary Clinton, Bill Maher, Al Franken and Bob Woodward. The books would then be "staged," or arranged with the same care a florist might extend to a bouquet of flowers, on a library cart; double-checked by a second staffer; and then shipped off to the residence or commercial space where they would eventually be shelved and displayed (or shelved and taken down to read).

Only sometimes do Bowman and Wonder Book President Chuck Roberts know the real identity of the person whose home or project they've outfitted: "When we work with certain designers, I pretty much already know it's going to be either an A-list movie or an A-list client. They always order under some code name," Bowman says. "They're very secretive."

Roberts opened the first of Wonder Book's three locations in 1980, but Books by the Foot began with the dawn of the internet in the late 1990s. A lover of books who professes to never want to see them destroyed, he described the service as a way to make lemonade out of lemons; in this case, the lemons are used books, overstock books from publishers or booksellers, and other books that have become either too common or too obscure to be appealing to readers or collectors. "Pretty much every book you see on Books by the Foot [is a book] whose only other option would be oblivion," Roberts says.

Located in Frederick, Wonder Book's 3-acre warehouse full of 4 million books is a short jaunt from the nation‘s capital. While the company ships nationally, it gets a hefty portion of its business from major cities including Washington. And, over the past two decades, Books by the Foot's books-as-decor designs have become a fixture in the world of American politics, filling local appetite for books as status symbols, objects with the power to silently confer taste, intellect, sophistication or ideology upon the places they're displayed or the people who own them.

Although TV shows set in Washington underwent a change in tone when Trump was elected (as did much of Washington itself), D.C. residents' appetites for well-stocked bookshelves, whether as functional libraries or as vanity props, seems to have survived. Or at least, that's what the demand for Books by the Foot's services would indicate: The orders Roberts and his staff handled in the Trump years weren't all that different from the orders they fielded in prior administrations.

To Roberts, though, the unchanging demand is a good thing. One of the positives for a business like his, he wrote in an email, is that familiar types of people, who work in similar fields and likely share similar aspirations, are constantly moving in and out of the area: "Military, [employees of the] State Department and embassies, political folks" are always either settling in or leaving. The imminent changeover to the Biden administration will likely bring precisely the type of new business Books by the Foot has depended on for years.

For most of the year, the coronavirus pandemic switched up the proportion of Books by the Foot's commercial to residential projects: In July, Roberts said residential orders, which had previously accounted for 20 percent of business, now accounted for 40 percent. That was partly due to the closures of offices and hotels, Roberts noted—but a few other things were afoot, too.

For one, more people were ordering books with the apparent intent to read them. "We're seeing an uptick in books by subject, which are usually for personal use," Roberts said over the summer. Because many people suddenly had extra time at home but hardly anyone was able to shop in brick-and-mortar stores, orders for, say, 10 feet of mysteries, or 3 feet of art books, rose in popularity.

To read the complete article, see:
Washington's Secret to the Perfect Zoom Bookshelf? Buy It Wholesale. (https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/12/26/books-by-the-foot-washington-dc-covid-books-440347)

Imagine that you are a member of the expert class — the kind of person invited to pontificate on television news programs. Under normal circumstances, your expertise might be signaled to the public by a gaudy photograph of skyscrapers superimposed behind your head. But now the formalities of the broadcast studio are a distant memory, and the only tools to convey that you truly belong on television are the objects within your own home. There's only one move: You talk in front of a bookcase.

As the broadcast industry shelters in place, the bookcase has become the background of choice for television hosts, executives, politicians and anyone else keen on applying a patina of authority to their amateurish video feeds.

In April, an anonymous Twitter account, Bookcase Credibility, emerged to keep an eye on the trend and quickly accumulated more than 30,000 followers. Its tagline is "What you say is not as important as the bookcase behind you," and it offers arch commentary on the rapidly solidifying tropes of the genre as well as genuine respect for a well-executed specimen.

To read the complete article, see:
The ‘Credibility Bookcase' Is the Quarantine's Hottest Accessory (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/01/arts/quarantine-bookcase-coronavirus.html)

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