Answering a Reader Question #558

Kourtney does Kouture Wrote:

 Hello,

I was just offered a 2yr exclusive contract by a potential mother agency. I took my contract home to show my parents, and they had a lawyer look over the contract. There were minor errors in the contract that needed to be changed. I am now negotiating my contract with the agency. I was wondering if this will make the agency not want to work with me?
Also is it normal to have to pay a website fee every year?and expenses for building your book?

Hey, Kourtney!

Since you're negotiating the contract with the agency, I'm assuming they're cooperating in the process, which is a good sign. Although it can be a risk to do that, if the agency is willing to work with you on it then I don't see where there would be any problems. They could have simply withdrawn the contract offer altogether if they were really put off by it.

In this day and age of the Internet, agencies now mainly market their models online and that involves a new set of costs, such as a website/photo gallery fee. This is a normal fee that some agencies have. As long as the amount is reasonable it's perfectly fine (and legit) for an agency to have models pay this type of fee, especially if you already have a contract offered (that means it isn't an upfront fee...upfront fees are a huge red flag).

After a contract has been offered to a model, it is up to the agency to determine whether or not they'll cover the costs of building the model's book via test shoots or if they'll require the model to pay those costs. So that is normal since you already have a contract. Below is a link to a blog post I did about this topic that will give you more insight as to how this part of the process works:

The Deal With Agencies & Test Shoots for Portfolio Building

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