Authors
How real authors used their books to create leverage, clarity, and lasting impact
These are not influencer stories or overnight success narratives.
They’re professionals who used a serious book to do serious work.
How to Read These Stories
Every author comes to Manuscripts with different goals, fears, and constraints. This page is designed to help you find stories that feel familiar, not aspirational. Filter by what matters to you, and see how others navigated the process.
While the majority of authors we work with are publishing thought leadership nonfiction, we also support select memoir and fiction projects where editorial depth, originality, and long-term intent are central to the work.
Nico De Bruyn didn’t have the “right” degree.
He studied nutrition.
He wanted to work in marketing.
No one took him seriously.
So he started small.
Did marketing for a friend.
Learned obsessively.
Reached out to people daily.
Michael Dumlao is an award-winning Vice President of Marketing & Communications with 15+ years of experience leading brand transformations across Fortune 500, federal, academic, and nonprofit organizations.
Former corporate leader turned executive coach who spent 25 years inside the systems that reward stoicism, status, and self-sacrifice. Despite professional success, Jim experienced severe burnout driven not by workload alone, but by the isolation and emotional suppression baked into traditional definitions of masculinity and leadership.
Technology and business strategist with a 20+ year career leading transformation across Fortune 500 telecom, ecommerce, and retail organizations, most recently as Vice President of Strategy at a $12B North American retailer.
Founder of GoPositiv and a long-time talent development leader who spent decades inside organizations designing learning experiences that actually worked. A dynamic presenter with a sharp sense of humor, Don became deeply interested in how the brain learns and what enables people to bring their best selves to work.
Veteran hostage negotiator and leadership trainer with nearly three decades in law enforcement who needed a way to translate high-stakes field experience into a durable leadership philosophy. The book became the vehicle to capture lessons learned under real pressure and make them usable outside crisis situations.
Former Wall Street executive who rebuilt her life from childhood poverty in Brazil, climbed to senior leadership at top financial institutions, and ultimately faced a pivotal question: could her value exist beyond the career she spent decades building?
Founder and CEO of Level Up For Life Coach, a professional coach working with women leaders to overcome self-doubt, who had long believed she was meant to write a book but lacked a clear path to turn that identity into a finished, usable asset.
Leadership consultant and advocate focused on closing the leadership and wealth gap for Latinas who wanted to turn a deeply researched point of view into a credible, visible body of work.
