Read Ray Hrdlicka Transcript

Richard: Okay. A question comes to mind, how often do you put out new issues? Is this just something that gets thrown in the jail and sits there for years and that’s it? How often do people get new issues?

Ray: Well actually, that’s a question that I’m going to answer here, but you touched on a really good benefit for the criminal attorney here that the magazine sits for years and years. Let me get to that first before I talk about the distribution.

We took a small couple of years, maybe two and a half year hiatus, in most of our distribution areas. We just distributed in a limited area during the time that we focused on the appellate work to prepare for the 9th Circuit oral argument and then motions because I recognized that I had to win this. We didn’t distribute in some areas and two, three years later we would get a letter from that area still talking about I saw an old dog-eared copy floating around the jail.

Richard: Huh.

Ray: That’s the incredible, long term, residual benefit for anyone of the advertisers, bail bondsman or criminal attorneys, because of the content of the magazine. You wonder, well I read it and I throw it away whether it’s a “People,” whether it’s a “Newsweek,” but here’s the big difference between those magazines and “Crime Justice in America.” The readers – I hate to use the old pun – but it’s a captive audience, okay? That’s number one but number two, their situation at that moment is specifically addressed by the content of the magazine. That happens nowhere else unless you’re sitting in a dentist’s office and you’re reading about dentistry.

Richard: Also some of the factors that would make such good readership is that I’m sure it’s very boring a lot of the time. Like you said, they’re a captive audience. This magazine’s content specifically addresses they’re facing and it’s a major problem that’s affecting their whole lives.

Ray: It is.

Richard: Now in the days of internet, which I don’t think people in jail are allowed to use, the internet has no permanence. A website it could be gone in a second, but this is a very permanent, physical thing that stays with people for a long time right?

Ray: It is. They keep the magazine. What we have learned over the last 11 years and now it’s about 1.3 million that we’ve distributed, what we’ve learned is that they take the magazine with them, they meaning the inmates. They take them with them when they’re released from custody so they take it to their home addresses or they’re transferred to another facility they take the magazine with them. There’s this wide dispersal of the magazine through areas that we didn’t intend to distribute, but it’s this extra benefit for the advertisers and for us. I got a letter years ago from Texas, we weren’t even in Texas then, and hey, I just saw the LA addition that my celly had here. Can I get a Texas addition? (Laughs) It was great, you know?

In answer to your question about distribution, each day in every jail there are new people coming in and going out and that’s what makes the distribution of “Crime Justice in America” so unique. Take LA for instance, LA has 300 to 500 people being booked a day into the jail system. Well then of course, they get released the same month, or relatively the same month get released. That might spike up to 700 on a raid day or something like, but that’s a lot of people. Now in other places, it might be 40 or 50, but my point is every single day there’s new people coming in and going out. What we do is we print the same editorial content for a quarter, three months. We print enough copies that we can distribute every single week into the jail facility.

For instance, your; pick a place. You’ve seen my list; pick a place and I’ll give you an example.

Richard: Seattle, Washington, let’s pick there.

Ray: Okay, Seattle, Washington. King County has 2,000 guys in custody. It’s called ADP, average daily population, and there’s 1,000 at the main jail Seattle itself and then there’s 1,000 in Kent, Washington which is RJC, Regional Justice Center.

Richard: Okay.

Ray: We send 100 copies of the magazine to each of these facilities every week, ten days depending upon if it’s a holiday or not. The jail gets the magazines every week. We’ve made arrangements with them already. They get the magazines every week and grab a small stack and drop a small stack in the common areas at the same time they’re distributing the newspaper or mail and any of the inmates can grab it. It’s at that same ration of ten inmates per one magazine. We determined a lot of years ago, working with Los Angeles and the County Council down there, that that ratio will give us a good distribution of the magazine and after a period of time everybody gets to see it, but it also doesn’t create a waste problem for the jail.

For instance, if a pod had 30 guys have access to that pod, the jailers, the deputy will drop in 3 copies a week. It’ll get sucked up. They’ll take it. They’ll pass it around. They’ll get transferred out. They’ll get released. Next week, another three.

Richard: Hmm. Okay. The attorney that’s contemplating advertising the magazine, what does their advertisement look like? Is it full page? Is it just a little classified ad?

Ray: No. I only do full page ads. I tried all that at the beginning. We tried a whole bunch of different ways. Magazines have been around since what, 1400 or whatever. I don’t know when the first magazine actually was, but my point is – When the printing press was invented wherever that was – we tried to quantify the results from all sorts of different distribution models. The only one that we were able to quantify very well is the distribution inside the jail because the attorneys or the bail bondsmen know I’m getting a call, I’m asking the guy, I know he’s in custody, and he says he got it from the magazine. I can quantify it. My calls increase; I used to get no calls or two calls a week. Now I’m getting two calls a day.

What happens is that – And you asked a very good question – The attorney must fit a criteria. One, he’s got to be proactive in his marketing, he really does. He’s got to want more business. He’s just not going to say hang a shingle and more people walk through the door. In today’s world, especially with all the pressures between internet, between; well Yellow Pages is passé, it’s long gone, but some people still do it in the small towns and some jails – Well all the jails – Still put out the Yellow Pages so you’re almost kind of forced to put something in there.

Richard: Huh.

Ray: All the jails still have the Yellow Pages in their booking area.

Richard: Okay.

Ray: The problem is that at that moment they’re going to use it but their family and friends, who uses the Yellow Pages? I haven’t used the Yellow Page in probably a decade.

Richard: If anyone has, it’s older people, 50s, 60s. They would use it me.

Ray: Excuse me, I’m 54. I don’t think that’s correct. You need to jack that up another 20 years, okay. (Laughing)

Richard: Well, if anyone is going to use it at all, which is not a lot, it’ll be baby-boomers so let’s put it romantically that way.

Ray: Yes, the old baby-boomers, let me tell you that okay. (Laughing)

Richard: Right.

Ray: My point is we wanted to be able to quantify and so we just put in four, at the maximum four full page ads, three attorneys, one bail agent and many times in our first one or two additions going into that county we won’t be sold out. We won’t sell out until maybe the end of the second distribution cycle and so those attorneys get a really big bang for the buck.

Now I’m going to tell you a story about an attorney in Los Angeles. You asked me what does an attorney have to do to get business. It’s very important, again I bring up the proactive and understanding what marketing is going to get you. We can’t close the business for you. They have to do that. You’re business to them. They have to close a business. We can only make the phone ring. The whole purpose of that magazine going inside the jail to disseminate the advertiser’s name inside the jail, get that person, pique the interest to get that person to call the attorney. Once that happens our job is kind of done. It’s up to the attorney. We get blamed for him not being able to close though. I look for the right type of attorney that is going to be able to close. The story that I’m going to tell is very important.

I had one attorney in the first four issues of Los Angeles way back when, eight to ten years ago, and he was in for four issues straight. I called him up to renew for the fifth issue. He said, “you know, I’ve received over the last year and a half or so one to two calls every day off the magazine and I only got one” – But here’s the kicker on this one, Richard – “I only got one piece of business.” You and me understanding that it’s a numbers game. It really is. That’s all you do. To get out your face and your name and your telephone number in front of a million people and get more people to call you, it’s a numbers game. Here this guy has received hundreds and hundreds of phone calls and he only got one piece of business. What’s wrong with that? Two hours later…