How to not publish certain modules using the manifest releaser

[achingbrain]

I have a JavaScript monorepo that uses the release-please manifest releaser with the node-workspace plugin.

A couple of packages are only used internally so don't need to be published.

They have private: true in their package.json so they are easy to detect.

If I add them to the manifest, e.g.:

{
  "release-type": "node",
  "plugins": ["node-workspace"],
  "packages": {
    "packages/path/to/private-module": {},
    // other modules
  },
  // other config
}

..then the release-please action adds the private modules to the chore: release main PR with a bumped version number as if it's about to publish them.

If I omit them from the manifest, their dependencies on other modules in the monorepo don't get updated which can make CI for the release PR fail, and/or it means I need to go in and manually update the deps after the release has occurred.

Is there a way to get the manifest releaser to update the sibling dependencies of the private modules like the public, to-be-published modules but to not bump their version numbers or publish them?