In recent years, a distressing trend has infected TV shows featuring household interior design. I’m talking, of course, about the display of books backward—pages out—on bookshelves. This must end.
Somehow, this bizarre book-positioning method caught on and became a thing. Normal people, in normal homes, now arrange their books this way.
Why? Some claim they prefer the monotone look of shades of white on a bookshelf to the chaos of multi-hued book spines. Others say they enjoy choosing books to read at random without knowing author or title.
Those reasons strike me as rationalizations for a decision really more about imitating a new fad seen on TV.
An internet search reveals the reason cited by these shows for hiding the spines of books. They blame it on copyright law. If they exhibited the titles, they say they’d have to obtain permission from the publisher of each displayed book.
That explanation doesn’t ring true. What bookseller, publisher, or author would sue because they didn’t want their book spine displayed before a nationwide audience? With print book readership in decline, you’d think these entities might even pay the TV show for the publicity of some bookshelf space.
Further, if the interior design shows fear copyright lawsuits, why do TV news programs routinely feature interviews of people with properly displayed book spines on shelves in their background? Shouldn’t the same legal threat apply to news shows?
Turn your books around the right way, I say. Stop this insidious disease before it spreads further.
If it continues infecting more homes, I’ll implement my own method of protest and no doubt it will catch on with other authors. I’ll get my publishing companies to print my book titles and my name on the page side of my future books.That way, if you turn the book around, you’ll still see what’s also printed on the spine.
I don’t expect things will go that far. Fads come and go, and this one must die of its own accord. As the newness fades, and as people search in vain for specific books on their shelves, they’ll realize how silly they’ve been.
They’ll turn their books around to reveal the informative spines once more. As they do so, they’ll pause a moment to thank—
Poseidon’s Scribe