The store's loyalty scheme was called the Baker's Dozen, and it was one of the better-designed pieces of small-business thinking on the site. It is described here as it operated; the club no longer exists and there is nothing to join.
How it worked
The rule was a single sentence: with every thirteenth book or other eligible item purchased, the store issued a cash credit equal to the average retail price of the previous twelve purchases.
That formula is worth pausing on, because it is not the obvious one. Most loyalty schemes give a percentage discount, or a free item of the lowest value, or points redeemable against a catalogue. Averaging the previous twelve does three things at once:
- It is honest about mixed baskets. A customer who buys hardbacks and a customer who buys paperbacks get proportionate rewards, without the shop having to run tiers.
- It cannot be gamed. There is no advantage to buying twelve cheap things and then a large expensive one, which is the standard exploit against "thirteenth item free".
- It is a genuine discount, not a voucher. The credit was cash value against anything in the shop.
The friction the store removed
Three explicit promises came with it, and each one removes a specific annoyance:
- No card to carry. The count was kept on the shop's system and looked up at the counter. Nobody was penalised for leaving a bit of plastic at home.
- No expiry. Membership never lapsed, and neither did accumulated purchases. A customer who bought four books in 2003 and four more in 2005 was still working toward the same dozen.
- No fees, hidden or otherwise. Joining was free and stayed free.
The store also notified members when they had reached their dozen, rather than waiting to be asked — which is the difference between a scheme designed to reward customers and one designed to have unredeemed balances.
What it was used for
The club doubled as a lever for everything else the shop wanted to do. Members received the same discount tier the store gave to teachers, book groups and non-profit organisations. Purchases made through the store's website earned double credit while online ordering was being established. And during Banned Books Week every September, any banned or challenged title earned triple credits — the store spending its own margin, deliberately and visibly, on the books somebody had tried to have removed.
That last use is the most revealing thing about the scheme. A loyalty programme is normally a pricing instrument. This one was also used as a piece of advocacy.
Why loyalty schemes matter more to independents
A chain's loyalty programme is a data-collection instrument that happens to give a discount. An independent's is something rather different, because the shop already knows its regulars by sight and does not need a scheme to identify them.
What the Baker's Dozen actually bought was a reason to consolidate. A reader in Dartmouth in 2004 could buy a given title at the bookshop, at a chain twenty minutes away, at a warehouse club, or online at a discount the shop could not match. The club made no attempt to compete on headline price; it simply made the thirteenth purchase materially better if the previous twelve had been made in the same place. That is the only price argument a small shop can actually win.
The design detail that made it work was the absence of expiry. A scheme with an expiring balance punishes exactly the customer an independent most wants — the steady, unhurried one who buys three or four books a year for a decade.
Why the name
A baker's dozen is thirteen — the medieval English baker's practice of adding a thirteenth loaf to a batch of twelve, generally explained as insurance against severe penalties for selling short weight. For a bookshop run by a family named Baker, a loyalty scheme built on the number thirteen is about as good as a pun gets, and the store used the same idea again for its favourite-books lists, in which each bookseller chose thirteen titles from twelve years.
Schemes of this shape are still common among independent bookshops, and the American Booksellers Association remains the place where the trade compares notes on what actually works. The Baker Books version is worth remembering chiefly for the averaging formula, which is fairer than the usual arrangement and which almost nobody else uses.