Triptych Distribution Notes

Triptych existed at roughly the same number of hard copies as The In-Between existed on campus but monitoring its distribution was wildly different, for a number of reasons. My monitoring of how The In-Between moved was leisurely over the course of the semester. Triptych was born as a physical book in April, a PDF online a little beforehand, and distributed on campus in the final 3 weeks of that semester's lifespan. As a result of the fact that everything was both ending and accelerating, its distribution patterns were different but no less worthy of study. 

The first thing I did was secure infrastructure. I did not have time myself to move around looking for copies across the whole department. Luckily, it was pre-existing. The student newspaper had an abandoned news stand on the 6th Floor that has, as I remember, sat unused since at least 2022-2023 save for copies of The Watermark. This is absolutely essential you understand: I had specifically asked for this unused news stand because copies of The Watermark used to circulate in the department on it, and I saw it happen in 2022 with enough clarity to be able to go back and reconstruct what it looked like from memory using my bulk copies of the spring 2022 release. See photos here. 

It was simple to ask if I could use it, and confirmation took no time at all. I do not think anyone cared. Furthermore, I also was operating in a different genre altogether. Science Fiction is different from translations of Pakistani literature, and we should not assume overlap in readership. Finally, they exist in different tiers of materiality altogether. I printed a perfect bound book, because I wanted a book. The In-Between was a magazine like Queeah and Literally, for reasons I have not quite been able to discern but might have just been financial and accessible, and the three of them share remarkably similar DNA on the physical level as a saddle stitched magazine in roughly tabloid size. 

On the first day, 5 copies disappeared. I think I have mentioned, briefly, how one copy was traded for copies of The Watermark and hand delivered. Another copy was hand delivered to a friend, who insisted I sign it for her. Another was taken directly from the distribution stand by a peer, who then in turn left it in the Teaching Fellows lounge before she went to teach, and there it sat for the rest of the day. I did not touch it because I was fascinated to see if it would remain there, having already beaten it to the TF lounge by several weeks in comparison to The In-Between, which took months to make it there. 

Another copy was taken off the stand by an unknown figure, leaving 4 copies on the stand and one copy still in my backpack by the end of day one. The next day, a Friday (April 24th), I went back. 

Friday is a “dead day” at UMass Boston in the English Department. No faculty are really there because they don't teach Friday classes, unless it is a low-level Monday/Wednesday/Friday class (Like English 101-102). But I went in, and around 11:23 AM there were still 4 copies on the stand and 1 copy in the TF lounge that had been left there from the day before. I did, anecdotally, receive some praise from peers who were there teaching on Fridays who asked if this was my magazine, and told me "congratulations." I began to set up shop in the Teaching Fellows lounge, and wait. Given that I only taught my own classes on Tuesday's and Thursday’s and Friday was always my day off in the week, I thought I could both lovingly bother my peers who were working, as well as check the news stand I had for signs of potential movement. 

By 12:27 in the afternoon, there had been no movement. One peer did tell me she saw it, but did not take it, because she does not like, quote, “touching books that aren’t hers.” 

By 12:53, there were three copies left on the stand. I began to wonder about the nature of the book as a book, and the comment of my peer. A magazine has the implication that one can take it. But a book carries cultural weight, it carries the idea of itself as an object with a sort of built in prestige by comparison. Not to mention, the newness of it. Everyone knows you can take a student newspaper from the student newspaper stand. But a book, in a stack of books, randomly appearing? There are norms around ownership in the UMass Boston grad student ecosystem I was previously aware of. Take, for example, my essay The Archeology of a Bookshelf. In it I describe how I had found books that had not been touched in decades living on that bookshelf. It feels odd to say for an English department, but norms around ownership and perceptions of access are important especially since I did not label my newsstand as “free” as explicitly as I could. Only as Triptych Issue #1. 

Furthermore, the books themselves were not the kind of books one finds on a college campus English department for free. These free books tend to be beaten up, stained, faded, old, or these thick pedagogical manuals. The books I had printed were undeniably glossy and new looking. Over the last decade at UMass, I have known students and peers who have no problems about taking old books on the perception of their value. But new books were treated with hesitation based on perceived value or ownership, even though my books explicitly are listed as “for free” on the inside flap, and cost roughly $3.80 per volume pre-shipping costs. 

I was, on a more personal level, somewhat pleased and nervous to see them taken. As a participant-observer in the ecosystem I have spent so long documenting, I like to try to understand student publications at all ends of the spectrum. I submitted to, and was rejected by, The Breakwater Review. As a student on a budget, I launched my own magazine in a genre I enjoy to answer how it feels to be an editor of a scrappy project operating on low funding or self funding, like Queeah or The In-Between. It is not enough to understand student publications analytically, as most of this site does. What about student publications as art? As editorial analysis, and reflections of the maker involved and their taste, talent, and preferences? 

As a researcher, I documented everything. My closing conclusion was / is that it is genuinely fun. To be in an environment with (an alleged) community of peers who, even if they don't pick up your book, support you in its endeavors was a delightful experience and you genuinely do feel a part of the historical and literary tradition involved. It is in some ways just a book, and more than a book. It represents something you shepherded into existence and are not entrusting the survival of it to a rather indifferent environment. 9 copies were brought to / put on campus. Maybe in 10 years, someone will find a singular copy in the Grad Lounge, and restart the process of documenting a fragmented publication history.

When I left around 4 PM, there were still 3 books on the stand left. By Tuesday, April 28th, two were left and the copy that had been left in the TF lounge had changed desks. By 1:36 PM on April 28th there was 1 copy left on the stand (X2 having been taken by a friend / peer) and 1 copy left in the TF lounge. At this point I began to ready the other 10 copies for distribution, once they arrived in the mail.