Book Launch: The Knockoff with Lucy Sykes and Jo Piazza

Yesterday evening Doubleday celebrated the launch of The Knockoff with Lucy Sykes Rellie and Jo Piazza at the Mulberry. The book is about the media world we live in, particularly print media in this digital age. Also the themes of ambition and rivalry -- two major themes in the workplace in a competitive city -- are explored when a magazine editor returns from a vacation to find she is replaced by her tech-savvy assistant, a nightmarish scenario that almost any print editor experiences regularly. Lucy and Jo handle it with breezy humor and it should be the most talked about beach book of the summer as it already is getting a lot of chat on Twitter.

It is astonishing how many media players showed up to support the two, who, between them, must know everyone in the New York fashion, banking and media worlds. Among the crowd: Yahoo! Travel editor Paula Froelich, Peter Davis, Dany Levy, Brana Dane, Richard Johnson, Mandy Stadtmiller, Caroline Waxler, Stacy Horowitz, David Barish, Vijay Pandurangan and DJ Chelsea Leland spinning with excellence.

Afterwards there was a dinner at Da Silvano's to celebrate the book. In many ways this was the start of Summer, a week or so away from Memorial Day, which is always a little bittersweet as so many people in media-fashion-banking travel to their various getaways. It was significant to assemble such a crowd at Da Silvano's on a perfect late Spring evening before everyones schedule becomes complicated. Euan Rellie, always the perfect host, needled me about the things I once wrote many years ago about him and his wife on this very blog. Over ten years ago -- yes, this blog is that old -- the New York blogosphere was under the thrall of snarky writing about the powerful and I regret to say that I was one of those voices. I had never met Euan or Lucy and wrote snarky things about them. I was young(it) and foolish and it should serve as a cautionary tale to writers everywhere in this digital age. Don't throw digital spitballs if you live in a glass house, or, better yet, you don't know someone until you meet them face-to-face and talk to them. So -- get away from the computer screen and meet the people and the influencers in the space that you are covering.