Erin Napier Solves HGTV Mystery for Fans — What’s With the Backward Books?

Ben and Erin Napier showed a lot of spine with their latest Home Town renovation — literally.

In the HGTV show’s January 5 episode, the Napiers renovated a century-old house in Laurel, Mississippi, to serve as the new home for the town’s Unlimited Dreams Christian Learning Center.

And viewers noticed that, for once, the finished product featured a bookshelf in which the books’ spines face outward. The Napiers typically put books on bookshelves backward, as seen on their Laurel Mercantile website and on the HGTV site.

“This may be the first time you haven’t turned all the books around, hiding the spines,” one person commented on Instagram — shadily, perhaps — as the Napiers shared photos of the renovation.

 

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“I’m guessing they do that for copyright reasons…?” another fan wrote. “Either way, yes, it’s cool to see the actual books!”

Erin herself responded in the comments, saying, “Somehow, we got permission from the legal folks!”

(Another fan, meanwhile, suggested that the Napiers could show the book spines since the room in question is a library.)

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Betsy Ayala, previously a senior vice president of production and development for HGTV, also attributed the backward books to copyright issues in an HGTV Insider post but added that homeowners on the network might “prefer not to be judged by the books they own.”

Jasmine Roth, host of HGTV’s Hidden Potential and Help! I Wrecked My House, also elaborated on this renovation-show quirk. “It’s a really simple answer: copyright!” Roth wrote in a 2022 blog post. “That’s right, this isn’t some breakthrough of a design trick. … It’s because the network would have to get copyright clearance from every single title in order to display them. And that’s not very realistic, considering each design could have at least 10 books in them!”

Roth added that it had become “pretty popular” for people to hide the book spines on their bookshelves at home. Apparently, being able to see the titles of your books and to find books easily is, like, so 20th century.

Home Town, Sundays, 8/7c, HGTV