If you enter an apartment, for example for the purpose of a party, the bookshelf is an ideal reference point if you want to know what kind of host you are dealing with. There are the colour-coded shelves, the bundles of life guides and the massive bookshelves with hardcovers, densely packed in rows of three. The bookshelf at home can be both: a designed showcase as a mirror of one's own intellectuality or an involuntary insight into individual emotional worlds. In times of social media, some inner workings no longer stop at the end of the shelf meters. Everything is shared: the holiday bed, the wardrobe, the bedside table and just the good book at a late hour. Bookstagram is the name of the bibliophile community on Instagram. It is as old as Instagram and has been very popular during the lockdown.
In contrast to the intimate, classic duet between reader and reader, browsing on Bookstagram becomes a publicly opulent happening. In addition to the passion for literature, the most important ingredient in the virtual picture carousel Instagram is photography. The most weighty object of observation is therefore the cover, comparable to the incredibly narrow waist of the fitness influencer, which can be admired, re-staged feed by feed.
Judge a book by its cover!
Depending on the design taste and look of the respective channels, it is raised onto the pedestal in a variety of ways: sometimes as if en passant, striped by warm light, sculpturally modeled and made to shine in natural tones; sometimes elaborately decorated with all kinds of props, staged like an advertisement in a poppy way into the picture. Once again, the cover serves as a kind of fan that covers the face of the reader, the influencer himself. But in all variants, the Bookstagramers know how to merge the look of the title with the surroundings, to use the design joy of the cover for their own world of images.
Much to the delight of publishers, in reversal of the postulate that a book should never be judged by its cover. Rather, it is an opportunity for them to reach potential non-readers, which is why they are only too happy to accept support from the Internet world. Frauke Vollmer, together with two colleagues at Hanser-Literatur, is in charge of social media and admits: "In the beginning, these accounts were ridiculed. Book next to coffee cup, so what! But if you take a closer look at the different channels, you will find great pictures and differentiated and detailed written reviews. The book is anything but a decorative object."
Staging is as much fun for them as reading
It may actually be a first impulse not to take the entries with the prettily sheathed, finely photographed book covers for granted. From time to time, the production is reminiscent of the devotedly staged and widely shared plate of lunch from the early days of social media. Bookporn, in other words. And yet it is wrong to dismiss this scene as superficial, to fear the trivialization of literature. In the best case, this is more of an attempt at high culture for the masses. The good guys among the well-intentioned manage to transfer the sensuality of a bookstore to the Internet. They advertise the book, i.e. the bulky thing, not a digitized screen version. They carry reading material, whether simple romance or literature, from the book stool at home out into the world, literally embarking on a hike with them.