Bestselling author Anna Todd’s Frayed Pages multimedia company is teaming with Wattpad Books to launch Frayed Pages x Wattpad Books, a new cobranded publishing imprint under the recently formed Wattpad Webtoon Book Group. FPxWB's first release will be After: The Graphic Novel, a graphic adaptation of Todd’s bestselling 2014 prose series that will be released in Spring 2022. It will be followed by the first two volumes of a new fiction trilogy by Todd, to be released in summer and fall of 2022, respectively.
Todd is the author of the wildly popular After series of novels, which were first serialized on the Wattpad online reading and writing community and later published in print by S&S. The book series went on to sell more than 15 million copies, and was adapted into a feature film.
The launch of Frayed Pages x Wattpad Books marks Todd's return to Wattpad, the platform upon which she gained her first readers and rose to commercial literary prominence. (FPxWB will publish all of Todd’s forthcoming books, in addition to publishing the works of new and established authors of commercial fiction.) It is also one of the first ventures to come out of the Wattpad Webtoon Book Group, formed after the recent acquisition of Wattpad in 2021 by Naver, the parent company of Webtoon, a mobile comics platform.
Todd will oversee all publishing at FPxWB in partnership with longtime publishing executive Anne Messitte, a veteran publisher and editor at Penguin Random House for many years. Messitte will edit the imprint’s forthcoming books and guide the imprint’s publishing strategy. Wattpad senior v-p Ashleigh Gardner will oversee the imprint on the Wattpad side. The imprint’s list will be distributed in print and digital formats by Macmillan.
“My journey started with those first words on Wattpad, so entering into this new partnership truly is a full circle moment,” Todd said. She emphasized that the mission of FPxWB is “to not only celebrate writers telling stories from unique perspectives, but to broaden the world of storytelling to give a new generation of talent the tools to get their words to readers everywhere.”
Wattpad Webtoon president Aron Levitz also welcomed Todd back to the Wattpad platform. “Anna Todd is the original author-as-influencer. Anna’s creativity, combined with her ability to build a passionate global fanbase, has set the template for the future of entertainment, and we’re excited to embark on a new relationship with her.”
