How do you cut through the constant noise and clutter to grab the attention of the readers who have been waiting for a book like yours? By being as creative with your marketing as you are with writing and illustrating!

For example, there’s The Primal of Blood and Bone, a vampire novel printed with “garlic-infused ink.” Less appetizing but just as attention-getting is the variant cover of horror comic Dark Regards printed with the blood of the writer, editor, and publisher. Streaming series The Comic Shop actually released a tie-in comic to promote the show.

Coming up with such unique concepts is not always as easy as it sounds, and they’re not always easy to implement. To gain more insight into the process, I spoke with comic book writer Daniel Nayeri and his wife, author Alexandra Davis, about a most unusual promotional campaign they undertook late last year.

The graphic novel series Nayeri writes, “The Bizarre Bazaar,” centers on a curio shop filled with strange and dangerous items. It made perfect sense to promote the series by setting up a vending machine filled with, in Nayeri’s words, “anything that seems to be telling a story.” This included art made by local creators and dissection kits.

It also made perfect sense to debut the machine in time for Rock Hill, North Carolina’s Christmasville weekend, when small vendors and seasonal celebrations take over downtown. But to get it ready in time, they had “only 4 weeks for a local painter to design and paint the outside of the machine, for Dan to figure out the machine’s programming, for me to find dozens of unique vintage objects at the local estate sales, and for a handful of local artists to come on board. I was still labeling and packaging items as Dan was installing the machine in the coffee shop at 9 p.m. the night before Christmasville!,” explained Davis.

What she understandably describes as “a fly-by-the-seat-of-our-pants experience” was almost immediately worth the effort.

“We can’t seem to keep the machine stocked,” says Nayeri, “and as more people see it, we’ve had more and more local artists reach out to us, sharing about their work and asking how to join in the fun. It’s been a source of wonder and discovery for everyone involved.”

If you’re lucky enough to be in the Rock Hill area, you can experience that wonder for yourself. For the rest of us, the tale of the comic-inspired vending machine still has something to offer: a behind-the-scenes look at how passionate creators are about their work and how much effort they put into making their readers’ lives a little more magical.