Five Years of Lab Partners: What I’ve Learned Since That First Upload

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On March 10th, 2025, Lab Partners turned five years old. It’s surreal even writing that sentence. Five years since the book hit shelves, but even longer since I uploaded that first chapter to Wattpad with zero expectations—just a love for storytelling and a deep curiosity about what might happen if I let this particular story out into the world.

Back then, Lab Partners wasn’t featured. It didn’t have the boost of promotion. I didn’t even have a single follower—the account was brand new. But somehow, it caught fire—quietly, quickly, and fiercely. Seven million reads later, I found myself being contacted by Wattpad HQ. Out of the half a billion stories on the platform, Lab Partners was selected for something bigger—a 0.000002% chance. That still blows my mind.

What followed was the long, strange road to publishing. I started the process in 2018, and Lab Partners officially hit bookstores in 2020. For anyone unfamiliar, traditional publishing is often a slow burn. It involves finding an agent (someone who represents your work and helps pitch it to publishers), negotiating an advance (an upfront payment from the publisher that’s usually recouped through book sales), and eventually, receiving royalties (a percentage of each book sold after the advance is earned back). It’s a process filled with both excitement and waiting—so much waiting.

But my experience wasn’t traditional. Lab Partners was just the 11th book ever published through the Wattpad Books program. Wattpad acted as both my agent and my publisher, choosing my story without me having to pitch it, and then partnering with Macmillan Publishers—one of the "Big Five" publishing houses—to bring the book to market. Being published by a Big Five publishing house is an ambition that some authors spend their whole lives working toward. It felt strange that this opportunity was just falling into my lap so early in my journey—but of course, I wasn’t going to pass it up. Still, having your book chosen for publishing is a very different experience than seeking it out. I felt unprepared and, at times, unqualified for what was about to happen.

At the time I signed the first contract, I wasn’t quite 18 yet—which meant my dad had to co-sign it. That was a fun conversation, especially since he had no idea what kind of stories I had been writing… or how popular they had become.

In that moment, I also chose a pen name: Mora Montgomery. It was important to me to keep my personal life separate from any spotlight, to protect the quiet space where I write from the noise that might follow.

The editing process—copy editing, structural editing, line editing, proofreading—began in earnest while I was in the thick of college. I was juggling two demanding majors while facing a series of relentless editing deadlines. Talk about stress! After all that waiting, everything suddenly moved at breakneck speed. It felt like I had gone from standing still to rolling down a mountain in a vehicle with no brakes—there was no slowing down, only keeping up.

And then, just as the book was released in bookstores worldwide, the world shut down.

The COVID-19 pandemic changed everything—life, priorities, plans. And for Lab Partners, it meant no launch party, no bookstore browsing, no in-person signings. I didn’t even get to see my book on a shelf until months after it came out. That part still stings, a little. There’s a kind of quiet grief in wondering how the book might’ve done if it had launched during a different time, without the weight of a global crisis shadowing its release.

One of the trickiest parts of this journey, especially in that season, was figuring out how to build a presence as an author while remaining anonymous. In today’s publishing world—yes, even with traditional publishing—authors are expected to contribute to their own marketing. Social media isn’t optional; it’s a platform, a portfolio, a community. But navigating that without showing my face, voice, or personal details? That’s been a challenge, to say the least.

Still, the support has never stopped. Every message, every reader recommendation, every quiet share or review—it’s what kept this book alive far beyond its launch. And while I can’t share the specifics of my publishing contract, I can say this: the royalties from Lab Partners helped put me through college. That’s something I’ll never stop being grateful for.

So here we are. Five years later. And Lab Partners still means everything to me, even if I can't stand to look at it anymore because reading my teenage musings now feels a bit like flipping through an old diary—cringey, endearing, and slightly unbelievable that I ever hit 'publish' on it in the first place.

If you’ve read the book—whether on Wattpad or in print—I’d love to hear from you. What stuck with you? Which scenes made you laugh, cry, or throw your phone across the room? (No judgment—I’ve done the same.)

Drop a comment. Let’s celebrate five years of awkward chemistry, emotional chaos, and unexpected connection.

Thank you for being part of this story.

—Mora