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Washington’s Secret to the Perfect Zoom Bookshelf? Buy It Wholesale.
Books by the Foot curates shelves full of books for Washington offices, hotels, TV sets—and, now, Zoom backdrops.
Chuck Roberts, owner of Books by the Foot, in his warehouse.
12/26/2020
In a place like Washington—small, interconnected, erudite, gossipy—being well-read can create certain advantages. So, too, can seeming well-read. The “Washington bookshelf” is almost a phenomenon in itself, whether in a hotel library, at a think tank office or on the walls behind the cocktail bar at a Georgetown house.
And, as with nearly any other demand of busy people and organizations, it can be conjured up wholesale, for a fee.
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.
Another force at work, however, was the rise of the well-stocked shelf as a coveted home-office prop. When workplaces went remote and suddenly Zoom allowed co-workers new glimpses into one another’s homes, what New York Times writer Amanda Hess dubbed the “credibility bookcase” became the hot-ticket item. (“For a certain class of people, the home must function not only as a pandemic hunkering nest but also be optimized for presentation to the outside world,” she wrote.) And while Roberts makes an effort not to infer too much about his clients or ask too many questions about their intent, he did notice a very telling micro-trend in orders he was getting from all across the United States.
“We can sort of, you know, guess, or read between the lines, and we’ve had an uptick in smaller quantities,” Roberts said over the summer. “If your typical bookcase is 3 feet wide, and you just want to have the background from your shoulders up, then you might order 9 feet of history, or 9 feet of literature. That way, you put them on your home set … [and] nobody can zoom in on these books and say, Oh my God, he’s reading ... you know, something offensive, or tacky. Nothing embarrassing.”
In the fall, Roberts said, numbers evened out somewhat, thanks to some commercial spaces reopening. But Books by the Foot might be taking on a higher percentage of home-library projects well into the future.
Jill Mastrostefano is the creative director and lead designer at PFour, an interior design firm that does, by her estimate, about 75 percent of its business in D.C., Maryland and Virginia. Historically, Mastrostefano mostly has ordered books by color from Books by the Foot, usually to create pops of brightness or accent points in show houses (homes built to display the designs available in a particular subdivision). But this year, she has spent a good chunk of her time outfitting model homes with specific rooms where people can envision themselves taking all their work Zoom meetings.
Clients can also order books by color scheme. | Scott Suchman for Politico Magazine
“We are probably going to be ordering more books because of what are now called ‘Zoom rooms,’ instead of studies,” she says. “People need to, you know, look good when [they’re] on video.”
In Washington and in political circles all over the United States, the fact that people are still, after more than nine months, showing up to work meetings and doing live TV appearances from inside their own homes likely means there will be sustained demand for impressive-looking bookshelves. And given that much of the politics-adjacent workforce won’t go back to working in offices until next summer, Books by the Foot can likely count on consistent Zoom-room business until then.
Of course, there’s evidence to suggest that people want to be or appear well-read but keep Books by the Foot’s involvement hidden. People probably don’t want to talk about their credibility shelves, Roberts points out.
Which has always been, and remains, perfectly fine with him and perfectly fine with Bowman. After assembly in the Wonder Book warehouse, that 12-foot order of left-leaning politics books from August (a somewhat large order for a residential project) was shipped to a private residence in New York for a client whose identity was unknown to Bowman—someone whose use for the books might be revealed one day, or might stay hidden from public view forever.
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