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.
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.
Reinvention expert, educator, and entrepreneur who had already lived multiple career transitions but needed a cohesive framework to connect his experiences into a teachable, repeatable model. The book became the backbone of his work at The School of Reinvention.
Emmy Award–winning journalist and media professional who translated decades of interviewing leaders, politicians, and public figures into a conversational, action-oriented book focused on communication, courage, and showing up fully.
Attorney and long-time policy advocate who turned a personal experience with dismissive medical treatment into a broader examination of systemic failures in U.S. health care, particularly for Black women and other marginalized communities.
Senior fintech product leader and VP of Product at high-growth payments companies who had accumulated years of internal writing, diagrams, and explanations, but lacked a single, durable way to codify his thinking for investors, operators, and the broader fintech ecosystem.
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.
Founder and CEO of a behavioral science and product design firm who wanted a clearer way to communicate how his team thinks and works to higher-stakes, enterprise buyers.
Ashlee Berghoff is the founder of Smooth Operator, America’s go-to process and systems specialists for event-based businesses. She helps entrepreneurs replace 7-figure chaos with 7-figure profits by building operational engines that scale without burnout.
Peter Parnegg is a sales strategist, instructor, and the author of Why Bother Asking?: Unexpected Keys to the Kingdom of Connection, a book that turned conventional sales wisdom on its head and redefined what leadership and connection look like in today’s world.
Speaker, trainer, and coach with a decade-long idea around relationships and connection who had built a solid practice but hadn’t yet turned his core philosophy into a defining, market-anchoring asset.
Senior global HR executive preparing for a major career transition who had deep experience and research but lacked a structured way to turn it into a defining body of work.
Founder, entrepreneur, and advisor with deep Silicon Valley experience who had built and exited multiple businesses but hadn’t yet formalized her core philosophy into a single, shareable point of view.
