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.

Sarah Mock

Her work focuses on a hard question:

Can we farm differently — without exploiting farmers, workers, communities, or the environment?

Her book, Farm (and Other F Words), explores exactly that.

Nico DeBruyn

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.

Arnobio Morelix

Arnobio Morelix is the co-founder and CEO of Sirius, a pioneering Brazilian higher education institution focused on the professions of the future.

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.

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.

Marcelo DeSantis

Marcelo DeSantis is a global technology and business leader with more than 25 years of executive experience across consumer goods, automotive, professional services, and technology consulting. He has served as CIO and Chief Digital Officer for multinational organizations, leading large-scale transformation efforts across the US, Europe, and Asia-Pacific.

John Thompson

John Thompson has been a senior executive at GE and Northwestern Mutual, leadership coach, and team builder with more than two decades of experience across operations, sales, and leadership roles in corporate America. Known for his practical, no-excuses approach, John focuses on helping individuals and teams take ownership of their choices and outcomes.

Steve Tang

Steve Tang is a CEO and leadership speaker who came to authorship through lived responsibility, not aspiration. During the COVID pandemic, he found himself navigating high-stakes decisions, cultural strain, and leadership ambiguity with no existing playbook.

Henna Pryor

Henna Pryor is an award-winning author, keynote speaker, and executive coach who helps leaders navigate moments of social risk, visibility, and uncertainty.

Stacey Kulongowski

Multi-passionate writer, performer, composer, and executive coach who has spent years operating at the intersection of creativity and leadership. Trained in musical theater, with professional performance credits and a thriving executive coaching practice, Allyson had already built multiple careers before writing Ballad of Dreams.

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.

Satish Shenoy

Senior global business executive and award-winning public speaker who has scaled partner ecosystems from seed-stage startups to Fortune 500 companies, generating over $200M in revenue. Parallel to his business career, Satish completed full marathons on all seven continents, including Antarctica.

Derek Gaunt

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.

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.

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.

Nicole Bianchi

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.

Terry McDougall

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.

Steve Fredlund

Steve Fredlund spent more than two decades as an actuary, doing what he was “supposed” to do, building a stable career, and checking all the boxes of a successful life. Despite outward success, he felt constrained by people-pleasing, safety, and a quiet loss of agency.

Daniel Wakefield

Daniel Wakefield is the founder of Top Tier Headshots and a business strategist helping entrepreneurs and creatives grow through genuine connection, not empty algorithms or shallow tactics. With a background in photography, branding, and community building, Daniel turned early coaching conversations into a broader playbook for business growth.

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.

Andrea Goulet

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.

Gregory Offner

Before the book, Gregory was doing strong work inside organizations.

After the book, decision-makers could:
• Understand his philosophy quickly
• Share his framework internally
• Justify bringing him in at scale

Dr. Kathleen Muglia

Kathleen Muglia, DNP, APRN, CPNP-PC, is a Mental Health Nurse Practitioner, Clinical Professor at Marquette University, and leader in behavioral health, pediatric nursing, and therapeutic innovation.

Danny Lehr

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.

Stefaan van Hooydonk

Stefaan van Hooydonk is one of the world’s leading voices on workplace curiosity.

After three decades in global executive roles across Asia, Europe, and the U.S., he founded the Global Curiosity Institute to measure and operationalize curiosity as a performance advantage.

Zachary Green

Zachary Green is a US Marine Corps veteran, former firefighter, and award-winning entrepreneur who built a $30 million company after starting from the trunk of his car.

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.

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.

Yen Verhoef, PhD

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.

Randi Braun

Randi Braun is the Founder and CEO of Something Major, a coaching and training organization helping women leaders navigate power, performance, and progression at work.

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.