To stop video callers judging your bookcase, buy its covers
IT HAS become the ultimate proof of intellectual rigour for television presenters, experts and politicians broadcasting from their home during the lockdown: a fully stocked bookshelf in the background, ranging from foreign literature to weighty histories.
But Zoom users without a display are turning to a quick fix: ordering “instant libraries” online. Book distributors who provide titles in bulk for TV sets and hotels, rather than for reading, are reporting a surge in orders from households as the pandemic has led to virtual cocktail evenings and TV appearances from living rooms and home offices.
Lauren Giles, the owner of Decor Books in Sussex, said she has been receiving about 10 orders a day from private customers spending hundreds of pounds on books by the metre to fill bookshelves. She charges between £30 and £200 per metre, with customers typically purchasing about six metres. The price depends on the type of books required. Styles range from time-worn vintage titles to bright orange Penguin paperbacks.
“My main clients were trade, restaurants and hotels, now it’s switched to private. They are on Zoom calls and they need the backdrop,” she said. Chuck Roberts, the owner of US website Books By The Foot, said the company was also seeing more orders from people looking to spruce up video backgrounds. The website sells books arranged in colourful patterns, but Mr Roberts said customers were looking for more serious tomes during lockdown. “They are saying, ‘I need 15 to 18 feet of literature or history or art.’ People might get made fun of if they had 15 feet of blue or green books.”
Bookcase Credibility is a Twitter account with 85,000 followers passing judgment on the shelves of everyone from Robert De Niro to Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary. It marked down David Davis, the former Brexit secretary, for his uniform shelf of Hansard records, and bemoaned former Trade secretary Liam Fox’s hardback copy of The Da Vinci Code.
Dealers who sell books by the yard are getting orders from people who want an impressive array behind their heads when they use the Zoom video device on their computers. It’s bound to backfire. They’ll be judged by the selection, and one doubtful vol could ruin their reputation. How could they justify Ezra Pound or Oswald Spengler, especially if they had never read them? Of course, Telegraph readers are driven to no such guiles. Either they feel at home with whatever books happen to be there, or they’ll have some old china plate on the kitchen wall behind them. Or in another room it might be an ancestor in oils behind enough varnish to make identification impossible. In any case, it’s impossible to buy a back-story to your life. After all, everyone can see and hear your talking head, which gives away everything.