Despair’s book, “The Art of Demotivation” now available for Kindle, iPad & iPhone


The Art of Demotivation™ eBook has Arrived!

Dr. E.L. Kersten’s Landmark Text Comes to Kindle and iPad

(NOTE TO READERS: I’m on vacation for a week. But even from this modest rental room somewhere in the Colorado mountains, I am unfortunately not completely free of my duties- as I was just informed by my boss in an epic, seven-part series of lengthy and increasingly slurred voicemails left on my iPhone earlier today… It’s a long, alcohol-soaked story- as are many starring my superior… But the short version is this. Despair has released eBooks of “The Art of Demotivation”. The Kindle version is here. The iPad and iPhone versions you can buy if you have the Apple iBook App (to find it, just search the app for “Demotivation” and you’ll find it).

Below is an EPIC tome that I received an email from the Marketing Department. I’m leaving it all as is- since my laptop is dying, and really, I’m on vacation and I’d rather not spend several hours trying to clean it up, shorten, edit, or whatever. (This very same department is responsible for spelling Lloyd Blankfein’s name wrong in that JPEG, natch…) I do hope you’ll enjoy reading it…. More than anything, I hope you’ll BUY an eBook if you have a Reader.

Finally, in answer to the inevitable questions I’ll receive from longtime readers of “The Wailing List”… NO, THIS EBOOK IS NOT THE RADICAL NEW PRODUCT LINE I’VE BEEN OCCASIONALLY MENTIONING HERE. BUT DON’T WORRY… THAT’S NOT TOO FAR AWAY FROM RELEASE NOW…)

And now, I present to you: someone else’s marketing announcement, pasted below. Enjoy!

Current and future Executives rejoice! The long-awaited eBook of the most important management guide ever written has arrived. Available immediately for both Kindle and the Apple iPad, The Art of Demotivation – MBA Edition, provides the next-generation of management the best source of wisdom they will ever encounter in a single text. Better still, it does so at a price that is almost obscene.

$15.95

You heard that right. This Edition of The Art of Demotivation runs $10 cheaper than our Manager edition, $24 cheaper that the Executive Edition and a full $1180 less than our historic Chairman Edition. If you’ve been waiting to buy the book Lucy Kellaway of the Financial Times called “the most daring, funny and subversive management guide ever written” then by all means stop reading this email and buy it!

Kindle Buyers, click here to order yours Go to Kindle Store

iPad and iPhone buyers, simply search for “Demotivation” in Apple’s iBookstore.

If you’re wonder just what The Art of Demotivation is about, please keep reading.


The Art Of Demotivation™

A Visionary Guide for Transforming Your Company’s Least Valuable Asset – Your Employees

Features 17 Demotivators ® illustrations by Kevin Sprouls, Creator of the Wall Street Journal Portrait Technique.

Motivation has become a multi-billion dollar industry, courtesy of the patronage of corporations and the noble intentions of Executives who lead them. At the heart of this colossal confederation of inspirational speakers, platitudinous posters, parable-filled management books, and increasingly complicated incentive programs lies an alluring promise: that with enough encouragement, empowerment, and esteem, employees will become productive and loyal, to the benefit of both their employers and themselves.

Yet in spite of the staggering expenditures on packaged esteem, polls show that worker morale has reached critical lows, with a majority of employees even claiming to hate their jobs. How is this possible? And more importantly, what can Executives do about this crisis of employee dissatisfaction?

In this revolutionary new management book, Despair, Inc. founder Dr. E.L. Kersten plumbs the depths of employee discontent and identifies its root cause. Though most employees live lackluster lives full of wasted opportunities and trivial accomplishments, they grow ever more certain of their enormous worth and glorious destinies. This is because they are the products of a narcissistic age, the results of a grand social experiment that has gone terribly awry. As a result, they are afflicted with an irrational sense of entitlement that simultaneously increases their dissatisfaction with their jobs and prevents them from accepting responsibility for their lives. Thus, in a terrible irony, managers who attempt to motivate employees by bolstering their self-esteem have only compounded the problem. By reinforcing the delusions of grandeur that imprison and torture the average worker, management has only further reinforced their sense of entitlement to the wealth, stature and privilege that justice dictates be reserved for the truly accomplished and inarguably worthy: namely, Executives.

With The Art of Demotivation, former professor and current executive Kersten offers not only a comprehensive analysis of the problem but a prescriptive solution; one grounded not in the humanistic fantasies of infinite human potential so often embraced by the motivation industry, but in the grim realities of a broken world. Managers who seek a productive, loyal workforce must first seek to liberate their employees from their prisons of narcissism by forcing them to confront that which they expend enormous energy to avoid:

their true selves.

About the Editions: Kindle Version

Kindle… Still the First Book Reader. Well, There was the Sony but You Know Who Bought that Thing?

Kindle Edition
Go to Kindle Store

Kindle readers already know how easy it is to download books with Whispersync. You also know just how easy Kindle’s eInk is on the eyes. The Art of Demotivation’s beautiful dot-stipple illustrations are truly a site to see. But this slightly-less-than-magical device has other features too.

Only Kindle offers a built-in Text-to-Speech function. We (unlike many publishers out to dupe readers into buying expensive audiobooks separately) have published The Art of Demotivation – Kindle Edition with Text-To-Speech enabled. No Author’s Guild or Audiobook Engineers Union can stop you from hearing Dr. E.L. Kersten’s landmark text read to you by a male or female sounding robot.

In addition to the roboreader, Kindle readers enjoy the unique privilege of reading The Art of Demotivation without the temptation to play fun 3d games, watch beautiful HD-quality movies, or Twittering some nonsense about using the potty. Kindle is a straight-up book reader and not going to get sucked into the game of trying to out-Apple thank you very much.

Order Yours NOW.

iPad/iPhone Readers
Suddenly Your Cool Shiny Toy just Made Your Shareholders a Lot More Money

If you own an iPhone or an iPad, you may already be well on your way to becoming a great Executive. You see, you have an eBook reader capable of delivering The Art of Demotivation directly to that device formerly only useful as a means to surf the web, chat with friends, watch movies, listen to music, place telephone calls and  engage in realtime streaming video conferences using Apple’s Facetime only to have them drop when your pinky accidentally touches that part of the phone that you know no idiot should ever have reason to lay a finger on.

That’s right. It’s time to put away childish things and get down to business. Who knew the secret to your corporate ascent was hidden inside that thing you tweet with while sitting on the potty?

All you need to do is download Apple’s free iBooks app.

Get the Free iBooks App for your iPhone and iPad

Once you’ve installed this free app, simply open it up. Then select the STORE button. Then type The Art of Demotivation into the SEARCH field. Voila! You’re ready to order.

Be the First in Your Company to Order an iPad Version

iPad Owner and Aspirant to the Corner Office? You know what to Do..

Once your life has been eternally transformed by your read of The Art of Demotivation, please review this book so that others will be able to experience the power of Radical Demotivation™.


If You Liked These Books…

If You Liked These Books

Then We’re Sorry to Say You’re a Hopelessly Deluded Idiot who Needs ‘The Art of Demotivation’ More than Anyone

Despair has a history of deflating oversized egos. We launched our classic Demotivators in 1998, in the full roar of the Dot Com Bubble. When others were taking revenueless companies public, Despair was cautioning the public against of the dangers of baseless optimism for its own sake.  But our warnings largely went unheeded.

Undeterred, our product team led by Dr. E.L. Kersten, released the print edition of The Art of Demotivation in 2005. With the nation in the midst of the swelling of another bubble, now in Real Estate, thousands wisely purchased Kersten’s pinpricking text and took corrective action while they still could.  The wise ones were spared the effects of the financial holocaust that hit in 2007. As one Amazon reviewer put it “I bought the book, when it came out in 2005, hoping for a laugh. I was only able to read half the book because I found it devastating rather than funny… [but] I got out a year before the crash, safe. All I can say is, thank you, E. L. Kersten.” You’re welcome Mr. Hughes.

The lessons of this timely and yet timeless work have never been more resonant than today.  

Don’t waste another moment. Order your copy of The Art of Demotivation for Amazon Kindle or the Apple iBook reader right now.

The Critics Speak:

The Art of Demotivation™ is the most daring, funny and subversive management book ever written…

Lucy Kellaway,
The Financial Times

A welcome pinprick in the bloated hot air balloon of management advice-it should accompany The 8th Habit or Raving Fans in the same manner that The Wealth of Nations should accompany Das Kapital.
–Kirkus Discoveries

“E.L. Kersten has written the most original business book in years… The Art of Demotivation [is] perhaps the most relentlessly on-message and thorough work of sarcasm since Swift penned “A Modest Proposal.” E.L. Kersten has found the authors of all the bad business books and beaten their collective [bobos] by hijacking their art form.”

–Smart CEO Magazine

Insight therapy hurts, you should use a more prominent warning label Mr. Kersten!
–A 5 Star Amazon Review

p.s.

This Wailing List was written by an unfortunate person working in our Call Center (@disservice) and not your usual Author.(@wailinglist) He’s on vacation. Please note I’m trying to compensate for my lack of wit and G.E.D. with copious use of graphics. Please click through and by the eBook if you can afford it. I don’t want to lose my job.

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Despair, Inc. | 800 Interchange – Suite 102 | austin, tx | 78721

Stay current on the latest news at blog.despair.com.

Introducing New Demotivators® “Legacy, Acquisition & (Wealth!)”


Our latest Caption Contest voting is complete- and the winners are decided! Introducing LEGACY and ACQUISITION. Our two first prize winners are Mike Plantan (for “Legacy”) and Ms. Deborah Knight (for “Acquisition”). They’re both soon to receive checks for $750, along with some other goodies. Also in line for a $250 cash prize for Retweeting our Contest Announcement is one Haley Vilhaurer (@haleybobl). Congrats to you all!

And, yet again, LEGACY and ACQUISITION aren’t the only new Demotivators we’re adding this week. Despair’s proud to unveil our latest entry into the canon, WEALTH! Didn’t see THAT coming, huh? And still- the WINS continue. Because starting now, Despair is going to give each and every one of you a chance to pick a free Desktopper or Lithograph with your next order! But details matter, SO PAY ATTENTION!

We’ve unveiled Desktoppers of all three new designs (Acquisition“, “Legacy” and “Wealth) and Lithographs of “Wealth” and “Legacy”. And from now through the weekend, we’re giving YOU folks a chance to choose which of the new items you’d like to pick up for FREE! All you have to do is decide which item you’d like for free- then use the appropriate coupon code (listed below) when placing your order. We’ll handle the rest! (note:You must have $19.95 of merchandise in your cart before you can apply your free product coupon.)

Free Acquisition Desktopper, use the coupon code: freeacquisitiondesktopper
Free Legacy Desktopper, use the coupon code: freelegacydesktopper
Free Legacy Lithograph, use the coupon code: freelegacylitho
Free Wealth Desktopper, use the coupon code: freewealthdesktopper
Free Wealth Lithograph, use the coupon code: freewealthlitho

But if you’re interested in taking advantage of one of these freebies, you’ll have to act fast. The coupon codes expire this Monday!

Thanks again to all of you who participating in our latest contest. Whether you submitted a caption, or you judged raw entries, or you retweeted the contest tweet, or you just voted on Semi-Finalists- you helped bring about two funny new entries to the Demotivator® canon.

See y’all soon!

Free Shipping – Which Sucks for Us.


This week, rather than introducing a new product, Despair is throwing a bone to all the whiners out there who complain about our shipping charges being exorbitant. Even you international whiners!

For our American customers, we’re offering a return of our FREE SHIPPING PROMOTION. All you need to do to take advantage of it is place an order for at least $19.95 worth of goods- and use the code shipitfreetome.

If you live outside the United States, and you want to get FREE SHIPPING, well, sorry, we can’t quite do THAT! But we can give you at least a little help, seeing as we usually do gank y’all in particular when it comes to shipping rate calculation. (Call it the Revenge of the Weak Dollar Policy…) If you unAmerican folks out there place an order for at least $29.95 worth of product, you can get $10 in credit on your International Shipping fees by using the coupon code yougreedyyanks.

(Both codes expire on Sunday.)

So- what are you waiting for? Start making our already overworked customer disservice employees even more miserable! Get shopping! Pick up some DespairWear Tees, or some Demotivator Lithographs. Or better yet, check out our just-expanded collection of badassical Laptop Skins and Mousepads! (Click on the “Non Demotivator Designs” to see a great many new choices of either! And do it now!)

The Blackout Sale Returns!


Don't Miss Despair's Biggest Sales Event!

UPDATE: BLACKOUT PROMO IS OVER

Starting Tuesday, April 12th at Noon CST
OUR Greatest Sales Event of the Year RETURNS!

SPECIAL NOTE: Before I even launch into my typical rambling promotional e-mail, which I highly encourage you to read in its entirety, I’m going to do a favor for those of you who have other more pressing matters demanding your attention (however unlikely that is) and for those of you who have some sort of attention deficit disorder. I am putting the MOST IMPORTANT FACTS about this Blackout Promotion just below this in Bold Red Type. If you do nothing else, please read the FOUR IMPORTANT FACTS:

1) This promotion begins at Noon Central Standard Time on Tuesday, April 12th- and not a minute before. (I’m very sorry it didn’t launch as originally planned earlier on Monday- our e-mail service provider had technical problems!)

2) Sale items will NOT be discounted until the promotion begins. So don’t try to order early or you won’t save any money.

3) If you want to score the free Insight Desktopper, you MUST add it to your cart. It won’t be included with your order otherwise.

4) Lastly, certain links in this e-mail WILL NOT WORK until after the promotion begins- namely, any links pertaining to Despair’s new Mousepad line. (I put that link in as a test of your attention span. If you clicked on it- and found yourself redirected to the Despair.com website, then you just punk’d yourself, beets!)

(We now return to your regularly scheduled Blackout promotional e-mail… Get comfortable!)

It’s time. Time once again for Despair’s Greatest Sales Event of the Year, the Blackout! It’s our Private, Exclusive Sale for You, the Readers of Despair.com‘s Sporadically E-Mailed and Haphazardly Sent Newsletter, The Wailing List. For 48-hours only, we are discounting nearly everything in the store to prices so low they’re almost reasonable!

But incredible discounts aren’t the only benefit of a Blackout Sale… For the duration of the sale, we’re offering freebies with any order! Want to get free Insight Desktopper with your order? Just add one to your shopping cart and it’s yours! Want to get a free Insight poster with your order? Just Buy Any Poster and we’ll slip in a free one. Want to get a free as-yet-unavailable Economics poster? Just order a second poster and we’ll include it- along with the aforementioned free Insight poster! (BTW- you won’t see either of those posters appear in your shopping cart when you place the order- just trust us… We’ll get them in there!)

But those freebies are only the start- because we’re also offering these incredible discounts!

For 48-hours only, all Demotivator® Lithographs are $9.95 (that $6.95 off- a nearly 40% discount!)

All Desktoppers are $11.95 (that’s $4 less, or over 25% off!)

All DespairWear is $12.95 (that’s up to $7- or up to 35% off!)

All Laptop Skins are $12.95 (that’s $7 off- and 35% off- too!)

And guess what? We’re also introducing an entirely new product line- Mousepads! And for 48-hours only, we’re selling them for $9.95!


(That’s $3 off their future retail price of $12.95 each!) And not only are we including ten Demotivator(R) designs, we’re also making several other hilarious designs available- including mousepad versions of popular DespairWear designs like the Social Media Venn Diagram, The Toyota Slogan, Vote Whig, Too Big To Fail, and many, many more!

So check yourself before you wet yourself (while I drop in a picture below to further illustrate the point that this particular new product line is especially worthy of your attention…)

And- as awesome as all that is- we’re going even further! Not only have we discounted all of our Build-Your-Own-Calendars by 35% for 48-hours, we’ve also updated them to include Summertime Start Months! That means you can now order fully-customized Demotivators Calendars for all the gift-giving holidays that are quickly coming up in the months ahead!

“What gift-giving holidays are you talking about?”, some of you might be wondering.

Well, Mother’s Day is May 9th, for example. And Father’s Day is June 20th. And of course Cow Appreciation Day falls on July 15th, for all your farmer out there who are looking to Demotivate(tm) any special heifers in your employ.

And hey, we’ve still got a couple thousand of our Pre-Printed 2010 Greatest Hits Calendars left in inventory, and we’re going to discount them to $7.95 just to get them out of the warehouse. Please, order some. They’re gorgeous, and ship complete with 4 beautiful mini-prints. Plus, the pallet they are sitting on is right next to the shrink-wrap machine- and that device puts out an incredible amount of heat. I’m worried that this is some kind of fire hazard and we’d really appreciate it if you’d do you part to reduce the immolation risk to warehouse employees because apparently it’s too much work for the foreman to slide a pallet jack under that baby and move it to a different part of the building… Please- save them!

IN CLOSING:

Please note: Did I mention how important it was to pay attention to those FOUR IMPORTANT FACTS at the beginning? I’m sure if you made it this far, you probably aced that part. But still, I just really don’t want anyone to chumpatize themselves.

Also please note: Did you make it all the way to the end? I’m so impressed! I’m going to reward you for your diligence by telling you a secret… I lowered the price for Pessimist’s Shot Glass to $0 for the first one you add to your cart. (Any subsequent ones added to your cart will be full-price.) So go ahead, treat yourself to a freebie! My only request: please limit your shot glasses to one-per-order if you can. We’ve only got 800 or so in stock, and any ones you buy will take away from freebies other later customers might pick up. Thanks in advance for your consideration.

That’s all. See you Tuesday at noon at Despair.com.

The Caption Contest is Back- Bigger Than Ever


Caption Contest is Back
Oh yes! It’s back- and it’s bigger than ever! Despair is starting off 2010 with another of our beloved Caption Contests- and this time, we’re giving the winner $750! Wow! How’s THAT for inflation! So- prepare yourselves- one and all- for the battle of wits that pits you again thousands of your fellow demoralized, disgruntled, or disaffected Despair, Inc. fans!

I know most of you have figured out how this works by now- but for the new subscribers and/or the particularly slow long-time followers, here’s the rundown on the rules.

We’ve prepared a perfectly caption-worthy image. Now we’re calling on YOU to with with the perfect title & caption for it!

If your submitted caption is chosen to be the best- you’ll receive a check for $500- along with some other goodies (that may or may not be grabbed hastily from our “RETURNS” bin in the warehouse…)

Here’s how this all works…

From now until noon CDT on Tuesday, we are accepting your caption and title submissions. (Incidentally, the “TITLE” field is NOT asking for your job title… I can’t tell you how many captions I’ve seen that had titles like “INSURANCE ADJUSTER” or “EXECUTIVE CUSTOMER ASSISTANT IN TRAINING” or whatnot. We’re asking you to submit a title for your parody poster!)

When the Submission stage closes, then the Peer-review stage begins!
From Tuesday at 12:01pm CDT through Wednesday at midnight CDT- YOU are allowed to vote on randomized, unedited submissions from other participants- should you want to do so.

PLEASE, PLEASE NOTE: I’ll repeat this once again. If you CHOOSE to join the Peer-Review stage, you are choosing to wade through a largely unedited sludge of user-generated (in some cases loser-generated) content. Don’t write angry mails to me about someone else’s caption submission- it’s not my fault! We’re trying to get a little bit better about purging obvious garbage from the user-generated datafile (vulgar or racist stuff, etc.) But you still may occasionally run into something bothersome or unimaginably stupid. That’s the price one pays for the opportunity to help find and elevate the occasional bits of brilliance that will most certainly be buried in this mess.

Again, to those of you willing to brave the wasteland in search of genius, we’re quite grateful for your efforts. That is why- once the contest is complete- we will again offer, for a very brief window- a chance for you to get a framed 5×7 of the winning design for free. But I’m getting ahead of myself… Where was I? Oh yes… Thursday.

On Thursday, we will announce between 6 to 12 semi-finalists from amongst the top contest vote-getters. If you don’t want to read through raw captions but you do want to vote on semi-finalists, you are more than welcome to do so. A final vote will be held starting Thursday afternoon to determine the final contest winner!

All you need to do in order to submit your entry (or entries) is visit this link. Remember, you have until Monday at midnight to submit your suggested caption(s)!

And- once again I’m inviting my Twitter followers- should they want to- to you Retweet the CONTEST invitation below. By doing so, you’ll automatically be registered for a chance to win $200. Simply cut and paste the blue text below into your Twitter update window and tweet it to the world!

DESPAIR.COM CONTEST: Write the best caption for this pic to win $750! http://bit.ly/1hk74 (Retweet 4 chance 2 win $200)

(Yet again, let me remind you: In order to qualify for the Twitter drawing, you need have at least 5 followers. And if it looks like all 5 of your followers were generated by YOU hastily so they can have fake conversations with you, you’ll be disqualified. Let that be a life lesson!

Now. Let my aimless prattling cease and your caption submissions begin!

Santa’s Toy Factory Tee is Here! (Limited Edition)


Limited Edition Santa Shirt

Limited Edition Santa Shirt

ONLY 1000 SHIRTS WILL BE SOLD. EVER. (WOMEN’S VERSION ALSO AVAILABLE.)

Hark! December 1st is almost upon us- and that can only mean one thing. It’s time for Despair to reveal this year’s Limited-Edition Christmas tee! And this year’s brilliant new design is as gorgeous as it is timely- as Santa Claus himself is forced to contend with the disastrous economic times. At Santa’s Toy Factory, it’s all gotta go- and it’s all gotta go NOW!

And this year’s Christmas Tee includes a special bonus! Each shirt ships complete with a Christmas letter from Santa himself! Read it and weep- for real!

As always- only 1,000 of these beauties will be produced and sold! And, if history is any indicator, they are likely to sell out faster than you can say, “Boy I wonder how long it’ll be before those t-shirt sell out?”!

Also, as before, this particular tee is available in men’s and women’s versions- and will make you the talk of the Christmas party this year even faster than getting blitzed on egg nog and making out with the office “(woman or man of ill-repute)*”. And won’t YOU be the hit at all the stores this year- with all the forlorn shoppers envying you and and the retailers awkwardly attempting to escort you and your stylishly glum tee AWAY from the premises with a quickness!

Ah- but yet again, I anticipate your question! Why would we only produce 1,000 if we know we could sell more than that? The answer is the same as before- Limited-Edition means we’re limiting the editions! It’s our way of making one product every year just a little bit more more special than all the other overpriced “(quality satirical merchandise)*” we produce!

PLEASE NOTE: Orders including this tee will ship by or before the 11th. So get them NOW if you are going to get them!

*EDITOR NOTE: The author’s original word choices have been modified in order to reduce the likelihood of offense during the holiday season. Thank you for your understanding.

Been Bad this Year?  That's Okay, Santa's offering a Last Minute Chance to Make Things Right.

Been Bad this Year? That's Okay, Santa's offering a Last Minute Chance to Make Things Right.