Offer Discounts to Your Fans: How to Use Coupons in Creator Studio

Coupons let you hand a discount code to anyone you choose: newsletter subscribers, event attendees, a fan who asked nicely, or your whole audience during a launch week. Customers type the code at checkout, the discount comes off your products, and you control exactly what it covers, how long it lasts, and how many times it can be used.

A code only ever discounts your own products. If a customer has items from other creators in the same cart, your code leaves those alone.

Where to find it

In Creator Studio, click Coupons in the left sidebar, or go straight to studio.curios.com/coupons. The page lists every code you have created, with its discount, what it covers, its dates, any minimum order, and a running use counter.

Every code carries a status chip so you can see at a glance where it stands:

• Active — working right now.
• Scheduled — saved, but its start date has not arrived yet.
• Expired — past its end date.
• Fully redeemed — it hit the total-use cap you set.
• Inactive — you paused it with the Active switch.

Click Create Coupon to make a new one.

Creating a coupon

The form has four sections. The code, a name and the discount are required; everything else has a sensible default.

1. What customers type

• Code is what customers type at checkout. Letters, numbers and dashes only, 3 to 32 characters, and anything you type is capitalized for you. Keep it short and memorable: WELCOME10, LAUNCH-WEEK, BOOKCLUB.
• Name is a label for you. Customers never see it, so use it to remember where the code went — "Newsletter welcome", "Con giveaway". It is required, up to 80 characters.

2. What it takes off

Choose % off or $ off and enter the amount. A percentage can go up to 100.

• A percentage applies to each eligible product in the cart.
• A dollar amount is spread across the eligible products in the cart.

Either way, the discount comes out of your payout — Curios does not subsidize it, and the platform fee is still calculated on the full sticker price. See the FAQ below before setting a deep percentage.

3. Which products

• Everything I sell: any of your products in the cart get the discount.
• Specific series: every product in the series you pick. Good for "20% off the whole trilogy."
• Specific products: only the individual products you pick. Good for clearing a particular edition, or discounting the ebook but not the hardcover.

For series and products, a picker opens where you can search your catalog, sort it, and filter by format. Picked series come back as removable chips with a Change button to reopen the picker; picked products come back as a list, one row each.

Each product row has a price menu next to it, and this is the part worth slowing down for:

• Any price (the default) follows the product through every price it ever has. Raise the price next year and the code still works.
• Picking one of the product's prices ties the code to that price only. It stops applying the moment that price ends or is replaced — which is exactly what you want for a code built around one specific offer.

If you chose a fixed dollar amount, the editor nudges you toward picking a price, because a flat "$5 off" that was sized for a $12 book will happily take a future $4 price down to nothing.

Products that cannot be bought right now show as Not for sale in the picker and cannot be selected; unpublished products do not appear at all. If a product covered by an existing coupon later becomes unavailable, the code stays valid — it simply will not apply to that product until you fix its listing. Reopen a saved coupon and the section tells you how many of the covered products can be bought right now, and names the ones that cannot.

4. When it works

Schedule. Leave Available Now switched on and the code works as soon as you save it, indefinitely. Switch it off and you pick both a start and an end date and time on the two calendars — the end has to be after the start. This is how you run a weekend flash sale or a pre-scheduled launch code.

Minimum eligible order ($). The code only works when the products it covers add up to at least this much, before the discount. Other items in the cart do not count toward the minimum. Leave it empty for no minimum.

Total uses. How many paid orders can use the code in total, across all customers. Once it is reached the code stops working. Leave it empty for unlimited — the list page shows a running count either way, so you can see how close you are.

Uses per customer. How many paid orders one customer can use the code on. New coupons start at 1, which is the usual choice: each customer gets it once. Clear the field for unlimited, which is what you want for a public sale code.

First order only. A switch. Turn it on and only customers who have never paid for an order on Curios — from any creator, not just you — can use the code. This is the setting for welcome codes aimed at bringing brand-new readers onto the platform.

Active. A switch, on by default. Turn it off to pause a code without deleting it, then turn it back on when you are ready.

Click Create coupon to save. If you try to leave with unsaved changes, Creator Studio will stop and ask first.

Managing existing coupons

From the Coupons list:

• The pencil icon opens the coupon for editing. You can change anything, including the code itself.
• The trash icon deletes it. Customers can no longer use the code, but orders that already used it keep their discount. If you might want the code back, pause it with the Active switch instead.
• The uses counter shows redemptions against the cap (2 / 50), or just the running total when there is no cap.

Common setups

How customers use it

At checkout, customers type the code into the Coupon code field in the order summary and click Apply. The applied code shows with the amount it took off and a Remove link, and the order total updates on the spot.

Two boundaries worth knowing before you set a code loose:

• A code cannot cover an entire order. If the discount would bring the items to zero, checkout refuses it and tells the customer to contact you for a free copy instead. Size big discounts against what is actually in the cart.
• Coupons do not apply to membership subscriptions. The coupon field is for product orders.

If a code does not apply, it is usually because the cart does not meet the minimum, the products in the cart are not covered, the code is outside its schedule, or it has hit a use limit.

FAQ

Can customers stack multiple coupons?
No. One code per order — applying a second replaces the first.

Does a coupon work with an affiliate link discount?
They do not combine. If a customer arrives through an affiliate link that carries a buyer discount and then applies your coupon, the coupon replaces that discount — an order only ever carries one.

Does the discount affect my payout?
Yes, and it is worth being precise about how. The discount reduces the sale price, and your payout is calculated on the discounted amount. The Curios platform fee, however, is calculated on the full sticker price, not the discounted one — so the entire discount comes out of your share. Price your codes with that in mind, especially deep percentages on thin-margin print products.

Does my code have to be unique, and can I reuse one after deleting it?
Your codes need to be unique among your own — you cannot have two live coupons named WELCOME10 — but another creator can happily use the same code for their products. Deleting a code frees it up, so you can create it again later.

Can I see who used a code?
The Coupons list shows the use count for each code. Individual orders are not broken out by coupon in Reports.

Does a coupon apply to shipping on physical products?
No. The discount is spread across the product lines in the order; shipping is quoted separately and is not touched.

What happens to a code when its products go unavailable?
Nothing breaks. The code stays valid and keeps working for whatever it still covers. Open the coupon and the "which products" section names the ones that cannot be bought and why — unpublished, no active listing, or a pinned price that ended.