It exists (film/TV, real estate, etc), but I doubt the person in this article would have paid for that when they could just scam a bookstore instead.

Scam?

I think that's the right word for buying something that you intend to return after 'profiting' from having it on display for a while. A scam doesn't have to benefit you financially to be a scam.

Yes. Home staging is a fairly common business for cities to have. They'll provide all of the materials themselves and then take them back once the photography/open houses are complete.

This solution is free.

Normally yes. I worked at a large used bookstore that would do this: interior decorators, realtors, and film crews would either purchase or rent large numbers of books. Renting would be cheaper, of course, as long as the books returned in good condition (which they sometimes did not). The labor involved was often very great, since most of those books came from their proper spots on shelves and then had to be reshelved (although we kept some nice looking sets that were frequently used for this). What was needed often had certain parameters too (e.g., books with blue spines, only leather-bound volumes, or only a certain height).

What surprises me in this case is that the realtor actually cared about the content of books. The vast majority know that people won't actually look at the titles and just care about the ambiance created.