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.
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.
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.
The book became the centerpiece of Nicole’s leadership platform. Organizations began using it as the foundation for workshops, executive programs, and multi-touch engagements. Instead of one-off speaking, the book created demand for deeper, longer-term work, including bulk orders tied directly to leadership development initiatives.
Executive coach and former corporate marketing leader who wanted to turn years of experience helping high achievers into a clear, portable framework she could use across coaching, speaking, and media.
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.
Andrea Goulet is a founder and UX leader who understands how trust and positioning are built.
She entered the Manuscripts process not to “become an author someday,” but to turn her expertise into a clear public framework, one that could create authority, demand, and opportunity in real time.
Danny Lehr is a sought-after speaker, entrepreneur, and former competitive athlete obsessed with helping people accomplish their biggest goals—one hour at a time.
Yen Verhoef is an educator and thought leader building a new model for how schools evolve inside outdated systems. Through Rebel Teaching, she challenges the inherited machinery of American education and offers a practical framework for repurposing it from within.
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.
