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 of the Women’s Nonprofit Network (6,000+ members nationwide)
Nonprofit Growth Strategist at Collective Results
National nonprofit leader recognized for innovation and impact
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.
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 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.
James Wang is a General Partner at Creative Ventures, investing in healthcare, agriculture, and industrial technologies. He previously worked at Bridgewater Associates and Google X’s Makani project and is a co-founder of Lioness Health.
Andrew Mangan started writing his book while still in high school.
At 17.
He wasn’t majoring in neuroscience.
He wasn’t working in biotech.
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.
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.
Douglas Scherer, Ed.D., is a keynote speaker, consultant, and lecturer at Columbia University.
Before writing F.O.R.G.E.D., Doug had already published multiple books with major publishers and sold over 50,000 copies of his work in technical leadership and information systems.
Author, Unlocked: How Empowered Women Empower Women
Founder, The Coaching Fellowship
Former Senior Leader at Mozilla, eBay & Sotheby’s
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 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 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 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.
Joe Heitzeberg is the co-founder of Crowd Cow, a direct-to-consumer marketplace connecting customers with independent farmers producing high-quality, ethically sourced beef.
Ricardo Rosselló is a former Governor of Puerto Rico who led during one of the most complex crisis periods in the island’s modern history. His tenure intersected with Hurricane Maria, U.S. federal response failures, and extreme political polarization.
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.
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.
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.
David Olivencia is the founder and CEO of Angeles Investors, which has invested more than $11M into high-growth startups. A senior technology executive and investor with deep experience scaling companies and supporting early-stage startups, including multiple unicorns. His career spans leadership, innovation, and capital allocation in high-stakes environments where execution matters.
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.
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.





























