What Are Tear Sheets?
Everybody wants tear sheets. Clients, agencies, & models all look for tear sheets to prove authenticity in what the other party is saying. The clients and models want to know that the agencies have models that have worked before and the agencies want tear sheets to prove to aspiring models that they can and do get their clients work.
Tear sheets are literally pages taken from magazines, proof that the models have been published. It’s the next best thing to showing people the check models received for their work.
For models, tear sheets are so important that a model will do shoots in another country for very little money if it means coming back with tear sheets in their arms so they can find work in their own country.
When looking for an agency to join, models should make tear sheets their #1 priority when deciding whether or not to sign with somebody. If the agency doesn’t have proof of getting other models work, there’s no reason for that person to expect the agency will get them work.
The tear sheets requested should either be on their website or on hand in the office. Scam agencies won’t have any because they don’t get their clients work. Usually they will promote modeling for magazines but are only able to get their clients promotional work at trade shows and conventions where the pay isn’t near to what magazines and catalogs is.
This same kind of screening to check agencies can be used to check the authenticity of photographers who want to shoot you. Every professional photographer has a book of the models they’ve shot and the published tear sheets from the shoot. If they can’t produce one, then you can be sure they are not what they claim to be.
As the model, it is your responsibility to ask for tear sheets from everyone you work with. It’s a very reliable way to make sure you’re working with professionals, and not professional scam artists.
