Promotions

Track your time-boxed marketing efforts — book launches, Kickstarters, BookBub deals, StoryBundle promos, and newsletter swaps — in one place.

What Promotions Are

A promotion is a marketing effort with a clear start and end. Use Promotions to track what's running now, what's coming up, and what wrapped recently. For ongoing work that isn't time-boxed (like a serialization), use Projects instead. Both share the same detail page, but each has its own list and primary filter tuned to how you'd browse them.

Feature Availability

Promotions is part of the Marketing feature, enabled by default for both author and publisher workspaces. If you don't see Promotions in your sidebar under the Marketing section, your workspace administrator may need to enable it. Promotions also requires the Destinations & Projects feature — if that's off, the sidebar link still appears but the page shows an empty "Promotions need Destinations & Projects" state until it's enabled.

Viewing Your Promotions

Click Promotions in the sidebar under the Marketing section. You'll see a table showing:

• Promotion name (with type chip and description below)
• Dates (start–end range, or "From [date]" / "Until [date]" if only one is set)
• Phase (Running, Upcoming, Ended, Paused, or Undated)
• Books (count of linked publications)
• Tasks (count of linked tasks)

The page header shows the total count and the active phase filter.

Filtering Promotions

Use the controls above the table:

• Search: Type a promotion name to find it
• Phase (default: Running + Upcoming): Filter to what's live and what's coming up, or switch to Running only, Upcoming only, Ended, Paused, or Undated
• Type: Filter by Book Launch, Kickstarter, BookBub, StoryBundle, Newsletter Swap, or Other

Promotions are sorted by start date by default. Click a column header to change the sort.

How Phase Works

Phase is computed from the promotion's status and dates — you don't set it directly:

Phase	When
Running	Status is Active and today falls between the start and end dates
Upcoming	Status is Active and the start date is in the future
Ended	Status is Complete, or the end date is in the past
Paused	Status is Paused
Undated	Status is Active but no dates are set

Update the Status field on a promotion to control how the phase reads.

Creating a Promotion

1. Click Add Promotion at the top of the page
2. Fill in the details:
   • Kind (required): Pre-set to Promotion. Switching to Project changes the form to ongoing-work mode.
   • Name (required): What you're promoting (e.g., "Foxglove launch", "Spring StoryBundle")
   • Description: Brief context that shows on the list and detail pages
   • Type (required): Book Launch, Kickstarter, BookBub, StoryBundle, Newsletter Swap, or Other
   • Status (required): Active (default), Paused, or Complete
   • Start Date (required): When the promotion begins
   • End Date (required): When the promotion ends
   • Goal: What you're aiming for (e.g., "$5,000 funding")
   • Result: Outcome notes — fill in after the promotion ends
   • External URL: Link to the Kickstarter campaign, BookBub deal page, or similar
   • Linked Series: Associate the promotion with a series, if relevant
   • Linked Publications: Attach the books being promoted
3. Click Create Promotion

Both Start Date and End Date are required for promotions — the system needs them to compute the phase.

Promotion Detail Page

Click any promotion to open its detail page, which has two tabs:

Overview tab

• Details card: Status, type, dates, description, goal, result, external link, and linked series
• Linked Publications: Books attached to this promotion. Hover any row to reveal an X to unlink. Hidden entirely when no publications are linked — use the Add Publication button in the header instead.
• Linked Destinations: Distribution channels for this promotion. Same pattern: hidden when empty, with Add Destination in the header.
• Statistics sidebar: Publications, Destinations, and Tasks Linked counts. Hidden when all three counts are zero.

Tasks tab

Available when the Tasks feature is enabled. Shows tasks scoped to this promotion — see Managing Tasks for how task views work.

Editing a Promotion

1. Open the promotion detail page
2. Click Edit in the header
3. Update any fields, including dates if the schedule changed
4. Click Save Changes

Changing the Status to Paused or Complete updates the phase immediately. Changing Kind to Project moves the record into the Projects list.

Deleting a Promotion

1. Open the promotion detail page
2. Click Delete in the header
3. The confirmation dialog (titled Delete Promotion) shows the blast radius — how many publications and destinations will be unlinked. It also confirms that linked tasks are not deleted.
4. Confirm the deletion

Linked publications, destinations, and tasks are preserved — only the promotion record and its links go away. While you're adding or editing a task in the Tasks tab, the header Edit, Delete, and Add buttons are hidden to prevent accidentally deleting the whole promotion when you mean to act on a single task.

Tips

• Keep the default phase filter on: Running + Upcoming is what you'll usually want — full history is one filter change away when you need it
• Fill in Goal up front, Result later: Setting a goal at creation gives you something to compare against when filling in the result
• Use external URLs for external dashboards: A link to your Kickstarter or BookBub deal page from the promotion detail saves you a search every time
• Link publications eagerly: The Books column in the list view makes it easy to see which titles are part of which promotion
• Pause rather than delete: If a promotion gets postponed, set the status to Paused — phase will reflect it and you keep the data