Author Type #5: Change Advocate

You see something wrong in the world, and you want to make it right. 

You may have experienced injustice yourself, and you are determined to call it out. While your issue may be specific, your audience can be broad, for you want to speak not only to those who have had similar experiences but also to those who need to know and who can make change.

Alfred Paine (not his real name—I’m not allowed to disclose it yet) had a ringside seat for some of the worst corporate behavior of recent years. A top executive in a global corporation, he witnessed firsthand a concerted, consistent effort by the company’s top leadership to mislead investors about its efforts to be a responsible corporate citizen. 

What he saw wasn’t bad marketing: it was fraud. It was illegal. And it was hurting people.

Fired when he confronted the CEO, he embarked on the lonely, frightening journey of becoming a Wall Street whistleblower. His story was reported by the Wall Street Journal and pursued by the Securities and Exchange Commission, the U.S. Department of Justice, and European regulators. The firm was fined tens of millions of dollars, lost its top leadership, and lost billions of dollars of market value.

But the story went far beyond one company. Alfred witnessed a pervasive ecosystem of fraud and deception. His book, which we wrote together and is now being shopped around among publishers, is a crusader’s call for systemic change in a rotten system.

It sounds noble, but it’s an incredibly difficult thing to do. 

“I gave the market, and the world, a wakeup call,” Alfred wrote. “At times, that was terrifying. Standing on principle, I risked my career and my family’s financial security. I went through a dark night of the soul in a basement in upstate New York, accompanied by a bottle of wine, Xanax, and terrible fear that I would live a life of humiliation and financial ruin.”

Change Advocates feel a fire in the belly, even a righteousness when they sit down to write. 

They know that something is wrong, it must change, and they are called to change it. They put pen to paper to make a difference on the largest stages: national, international, global. With passion and purpose, they write books that have the potential to shift the narrative, sometimes with seismic effects. When they think about success, that’s what they want their book to do for them.