Like many others, Anna Todd stumbled onto the platform seeking fan-scribed, imagined stories about her favorite fandoms. “I found Wattpad through reading fanfiction and from the second I laid my eyes on the platform, I fell down the rabbit hole,” Anna says. Once Anna had devoured countless stories, she took a deep breath and, while standing in the checkout line at Target, tapped out what would become the first chapter of her first story on Wattpad.

Typing and uploading one chapter at a time, Anna wrote After in her free moments on her phone. What she found through the process was a community like no other.