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!

Father’s Day is coming and Despair’s Free Gift Promo is Back


FATHER’S DAY IS JUNE 20TH- AND WE’RE HERE TO HELP!
(But please pay attentions- the details are important!)

Duration: NOW through Tuesday June 8thIt’s the rare return of my most favorite of promotions (since, uh, I invented it myself…). That’s right- it’s THE GIFT! Put simply, this is the promo where we give Wailing List subscribers like yourselves the chance to GET ONE FREE GIFT from a list of several of our most popular products! Yes, for free! All you have to do is spend $29.95 on something (or combination of things- including your FREEBIE). Then, use the coupon code- and viola!

Just so there’s no confusion- here’s an example!

You put two of our beautiful 24″x30″ Lithographs into your shopping cart. The total? $31.90. Then you apply the coupon- and suddenly, your order total is $15.95! You just got a free $15.95 poster!

And guess what? This time around, we’ve even added Mousepads to the mix! So you’ve got NO EXCUSE not to take advantage of this great promotion while you can! Getting a cynical humor product for your perpetually grumpy Dad is thoughtless enough- how much moreso when you don’t even really pay for it? You can’t put a PRICE on that kind of thoughtlessness! (‘Cause it’s, uh, well, you know… Free.) Ready to take advantage of this amazing, limited-time super-deal? Here are the coupon codes you’ll need to know!

If you want a free Laptop Skin with your order,
use the coupon code: freelaptopskin

If you want a free Lithograph with your order,
use the coupon code: freelithograph

If you want a free Desktopper with your order,
use the coupon code: freedesktopper

If you want a free T-shirt with your order,
use the coupon code: freetee

If you want a free Mousepads with your order,
use the coupon code: freemousepad

REMEMBER:
These codes expire Tuesday the 8th- at midnight Central Time- so use them or lose them! And remember, by ordering during THIS promotion, you’ll also be helping me to look like a badass before my college-educated marketing “superiors”- who think the idea of a “brilliant” marketing promotion is one in which they end up with an even more vaunted job title on their business card and even more take home pay than they already bank. Like they don’t make enough already! (Yes, I’m talking to YOU, H.J.!)

So what are you waiting for? Start loading up! 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 Returns!


Here we go again! It’s our second Caption Contest of 2010- and once again, we’re bringing the big bucks for the smartest caption! The winner of this contest gets $750- not a bad payoff (plus whatever money your employer pays you while you waste time at your workplace trying to come up with a funny caption!) So- my fellow disgruntled masses- LET’S GET READY TO GRUUUUUUUUMMMMMMBBBLLLLLLLE!!

So- for those of you NEW to Despair’s Wailing List newsletter, lemme explain how this works…

Despair has gone to great pains to procure a wonderfully perfectly caption-worthy image- the beaut above. Now we’re calling on YOU to author the perfect title & caption for it!

From now until noon CST on Tuesday, we’re accepting your caption and title submissions. And by “title”, we mean “title for the poster”- NOT your job title. You could have the wittiest caption in the world- but if you title your poster “CUSTOMER SATISFACTION SPECIALIST“, you are probably not going to win the contest.

After the Submission window closes, then the Peer-review window opens! From Tuesday at 12:01pm CDT through Wednesday at midnight CST- YOU are all invited to vote on randomized, unedited submissions from other participants- should you want to do so. (You will receive an e-mail invitation to judge captions Tuesday morning…)

A WORD OF WARNING: I know you longtimers are tired of hearing this, but I get complaints every time- so I’m repeating it. If you CHOOSE to join the Peer-Review stage, you’re inevitably going to be grinding your way through a seemingly barrage of frequently annoying or tiresome material. Yes, you’ll find some gems along with way, but you’ll endure more than your share of groaners in the process. It’s the price you pay for joining the loser-generated content revolution! But the reward is worth it- because once the contest is complete- Despair will offer, for a very brief time- a chance for you to get a framed 5×7 of the winning design for FREE.

On Thursday, we will announce the semi-finalists from amongst the top contest vote-getters. If you don’t want to participate in the caption-judging but you do want to vote on semi-finalists, you’re more than welcome to do so. (It’s a lot more fun, frankly…) 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 $250. 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. We’re not trying to encourage multiple-personality disorders, here- you’ll have enough personality problems already!)

Let your brilliant caption submissions begin!

And hey- a quick-reminder for you DespairWear t-shirt fans out there… If you want to save 20% on one of our recent tees, such as The Flash Tee, The Help Tee, The Toyota Tee, My Opinion Tee or the Vote Whig Tee- just use the coupon code iwanttosave20percentononeofyourrecenttees (this coupon expires at end of day tomorrow, or Friday the 26th).

The Wailing List – The Retirement Party Returns


The Retirement Party

Yes, if you bothered to read the headline copy above, you read it correctly. For the first time in Despair history, we are permanently retiring over two dozen Demotivator designs from our collection! And by retiring, I really mean we’re deep-sixing them. Once this promotion is complete, they will be removed from the website and never made available for purchase again! But before that time, we’re making them available for only $7.95 each! That’s 50% off most of them! And if that wasn’t a good enough deal, we’re even giving you a chance to pick up a desktopper of our brand new design, Indecision, for the crazy price of FREE! (For your first one only…)

Why are we doing such a thing? Each one has a special story, a distinct history, a place near-and-dear to our hearts. We think of them almost like pets. And in the case of these soon-to-be-retired designs, we’re tired of putting up with their crap! As our Demotivator collection has grown and grown over the years, it becomes harder and harder to justify carrying the underperformers- even if some of them are personal favorites to various staff members here. So we’re kicking-them-to-the-curb.

And guess what, in the midst of all this awesome super-sale action, we’re even rolling out a new Limited-Edition DespairWear Tee! How limited is this baby? We’re only printing 500 of them! That’s more limited than any tee we’ve ever done! Why are we doing that? I have no idea- nobody tells me anything! I yelled myself hoarse this morning trying to make the case that the design is too classic and funny to limit to 500- and nobody cared! But what is the new design, you ask?

Paternity

We’re only selling 500 of these babies. And we’re even doing you a super-solid by offering them for $15.95- instead of our usual limited-run prices of $19 or more. So please, please, please- if you want one, order it NOW! Throw in your free Indecision desktopper, and pick up some soon-to-vanish Demotivator Tees, Desktoppers, and Posters for $7.95. But do it quickly. Because you know we’re going to be blast through these tees and retired designs in a flash, and if you waited too long, you’ll be mad at US. Don’t let that happen!