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.

Jamie Russo

Jamie Russo is the founder of Tweetjoy and runs a boutique content agency serving startups.

he operates at the intersection of:

• Writing
• Brand building
• Community
• Multi-format content creation

Angela Schroeder

Angela Chanowsky is the founder of Unique Genius, where she helps business owners reclaim focus, freedom, and growth by building elite virtual teams.

Katie Joy Duke

Katie Joy Duke is a mindset coach, retreat leader, and former disability attorney.

Her memoir, Still Breathing, chronicles love, loss, Stage IV breast cancer, and reinvention.

Jeanie Duncan

Jeanie Duncan is an executive and team coach who works with Fortune 100 and 500 companies, higher education institutions, and nonprofit organizations navigating complex change.

Michael Biarnes

Michael Biarnes works at the forefront of healthcare strategy, focused on improving patient outcomes and advancing meaningful innovation.

But beyond healthcare, he’s become known for something deeper:

Helping people redefine success.

Alisha Weilfaert

Alisha Wielfaert is a best-selling author, transformational coach, speaker, podcaster, and artist who empowers creatives, entrepreneurs, and seekers to align with their inner wisdom and build flourishing lives and businesses.

Victor Barnes

Victor Barnes is a CPA and MBA with a career grounded in financial rigor, analysis, and professional standards. He approached authorship with skepticism, not sentiment, and evaluated the book process the same way he would any serious professional undertaking.

Lori McDowell

Lori Mazer is a strategist and leader whose work centers on helping individuals and organizations clarify their voice, sharpen their reputation, and expand their impact.

Dr. Ardeshir Mehran

Dr. Ardeshir Mehran is a psychiatrist and public thinker whose work sits at the intersection of mental health, identity, and personal agency. Trained to diagnose and treat, he increasingly felt constrained by systems that prioritize comfort over truth.

Michael Dumlao

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.

Jinny Uppal

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.

Don Sandel

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.

Roger Osorio

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.

Traci Mitchell

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.

Mayumi “Umi” Grigsby

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.

Ahmed Siddiqui

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.

Rachell Kitchen

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.

Nate Androsky

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.

Alexandra Shapiro

Former federal prosecutor and one of the leading appellate lawyers in the United States, who has argued before the Supreme Court, clerked for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and won numerous appeals resulting in exonerations of wrongfully convicted defendants.

Ashlee Berghoff

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.

Ty Pinkins

Ty Pinkins is a 21-year U.S. Army veteran, former White House staffer, Georgetown Law graduate, TEDx speaker, and U.S. Senate nominee from Mississippi. His book 23 Miles in Running chronicles his journey from chopping cotton in the Mississippi Delta to serving in the White House.

Jane Finette

Author, Unlocked: How Empowered Women Empower Women
Founder, The Coaching Fellowship
Former Senior Leader at Mozilla, eBay & Sotheby’s

Peter Parnegg

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.

Cheri Mason

Cheri Mason is the former Chairman of the Board of Veterans’ Appeals at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, where she led one of the largest federal adjudicatory bodies in the country.

Amy Dong

Amy Dong is a coach, facilitator, and author of Twenty-One Years Young, praised by The New York Times as “honest, refreshing and, at times, gut-wrenching.

Corrie Napier

Corrie Napier is a conflict resolution consultant, mediator, and speaker who helps leaders turn destructive conflict into constructive conversations using her B.U.I.L.D. framework.

Catherine Connelly

Catherine Connelly is a veteran tech entrepreneur who spent two decades building and scaling companies in the online dating and social discovery space. In 2020, she sold her company, The Meet Group, in a $500M acquisition.

Jason Levin

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.

Navid Nazemian

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.

Dr. Christina Cipriano

Yale Child Study Center professor and psychologist who wanted to take rigorous learning and development science out of academic journals and turn it into a practical, widely accessible book that helps families and educators challenge broken systems and create better outcomes for kids.

Jen Marr

Crisis response leader, trainer, and former corporate executive who wanted to turn years of frontline experience and care-based work into a credible, teachable framework she could scale through training, speaking, and programs.

Scott White

CEO and Chairman of a public real estate company who had spent decades building businesses, teams, and results, but wanted a meaningful way to share his philosophy on happiness, purpose, and living fully beyond quarterly outcomes.

Dr. Naeema Olatunji

Physician and nonprofit leader carrying a deeply personal story that required care, structure, and emotional safety to translate into a finished memoir rather than remaining an unwritten burden.

Hilary DeCesare

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.