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.

The Last and Best Holiday Deal! (Offers ends Midnight CST Thursday)


WhiteOut

THE LAST, BEST HOLIDAY DEAL IS HERE:

DEAL 3 – THE WHITEOUT
Duration: WEDNESDAY 12/16 through Thursday 12/17

Summary:
If you’re still looking to do some BIG shopping- this is THE DEAL for you- because we’re giving away freebies with any order over $20- and the more you spend, the more freebies you’ll get! Check this out!

When you spend $20 or more, we’ll throw in a free Pessimist’s Mug!

When you spend $30 or more, we’ll ALSO throw in a 2010 Best of Demotivators calendar (with 4 free mini-prints!)!

When you spend $50 or more, we’ll ALSO throw in a Pessimist’s Shot Glass AND a Pessimist’s Glass!

And- hey there! If you buy any lithograph, we’ll ALSO throw in a FREE Perseverance Lithograph. WOW!

Imagine! By buying only $50 worth of stuff- you can score over $50 worth of additional freebies- most of them sized to fit in a stocking*! And people will actually think you cared enough to buy them the very worst- when in fact, you didn’t even care enough to do that! Bitter irony abounds!

And here’s a bonus even I didn’t know about! For the duration of the promotion, Despairwear Tees will all be discounted to $15.95. That’s up to $4 the retail price- on some of the most comfortable, best-printed ironic tees known to mankind! Wow!

Don’t forget- anything you order should arrive before Christmas- even if you just use Standard Shipping- provided you are shipping to a U.S. address! (If any item is on delayed shipping or backorder, we will expressly tell you so on that item’s order page…) So go on, load up! You’ll never find a more satisfying set of gift choices for for that not so special pessimist, cynic, or underachiever in your workplace, or immediate or extended family!

Just remember. The clock is ticking. You need to place this order before Midnight CDT on Thursday in order to score all these extra drop-ins and get them in time for gift-giving. So tarry no longer!


* In the event that we run out of a particular promotional freebie- an item of equal or greater value may be included in its place. We’re pretty sure we have enough to cover demand, but occasionally we miscalculate. As you can probably imagine.

Video – Self Narratives


While most employees evidence a startling lack of intellectual curiosity or creativity, they prove profoundly imaginative when estimating their relative usefulness or when postulating visions of their own probable futures. In short, they are prisoners of their own optimistic delusions. In this online video, Dr. Kersten offers several conversational techniques which can be used to demolish those delusions and liberate employees from the torment of their unrealistic expectations.


Click on the above to watch this video.

Video – Addressing Employee Complaints


In this segment, Dr. E.L. Kersten provides executives and managers with a shockingly effective strategy for responding to the complaints of their subordinates.



Click on the above to watch this video.

Video – Disconfirmation


Face-to-face interaction of executives with their employee subordinates is an unfortunate necessity in most organizations. However distasteful, such exchanges do provide fertile opportunities for the seeding of Radical Demotivation™ in the employee psyche. In this segment, Dr. E.L. Kersten explains one of several disconfirmational communication tactics which can be helpful in disabusing employees of their narcissistic delusions of parity.


Click on the above to watch this video.

Video – Principles of Organizational Storytelling


Dr. E.L. Kersten provides a helpful overview of storytelling techniques that can aid executives and managers in the creation of a Radically Demotivating work environment.



Click on the above to watch this video.