I submitted to this guy once when I was really new to querying. Looking over his track record, I'd never do it again. He makes himself out to be this super special agent worth going through a YouTube maze to have the privilege of querying, only for most of his sales to be to a single small agency that accepts author submissions.

Don't query this guy.

EQ: 4/6/21

Fantasy 78k

adult com fantasy-mag realism, 88k 10/31/20

Was formerly represented by him. Would not recommend.

DO NOT SUBMIT TO AGENCY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
After sending them a proposal I worked on for 2 hours (not worth it, trust me), they rejected it within an hour.
Claim #1 - I had no social media links ANYWHERE when they were in the signature of the query letter email.
Claim #2 - Very uninteresting.
Very cruel & rude, I found. A literary agent should be looking over your proposal, taken proper time that is needed in order to do so, and reading over your chapters instead of rejecting just by one quick look. He even said that he's "getting away from the Christian genre because it doesn't sell as much anymore" where, on the bio of the Hartline website, it actually says otherwise.

I have a few friends who are agented under him. I do not recommend him as an agent.

His entire twitter activity for the past few months is just links to his gaming streams and other random BS. Weird.

Wow. His whole agency (C.Y.L.E) is sketchy. I checked PM and all his junior agents sold to the same (digital) publishing house (INtense), which may even be a side project of his.

This guy just wants everything to be as easy for him as possible. In part, it's an agent's job to give their authors a following. Building it on Twitter, FB, or through a blog takes an immense amount of time and it's very difficult to gain traction. Gaining thousands of followers on Twitter takes relentless tweets and retweets and most people don't have the time to do that and write.

Having a major publishing deal accelerates the process immensely. That's why people want an agent and a publishing deal because otherwise they're spinning their wheels trying to get people to read their books and blogs. But he wants authors to do all the heavy lifting ahead of time.

He comes across as a bit of a used car salesman/multi-level marketing type with dashes of con artist thrown in. I don't want to totally disparage the guy; maybe he's totally on the level once you get past his requirements, but I still get warning signals from his videos.

To submit, you must watch 3 indulgent, arrogant videos on his website to get a secret code. Even then, he's looking more at social media following than anything else. Not going to bother with him. The videos alone are exhausting to sit through.

Thank you for the clarification. We had a chance to dive in. We love the
descriptions, but are having a harder time connecting with the voice.
Unfortunately, since we don't take on as much fiction, we're not the
best fit. But thank you so much for thinking of us.

Sincerely,
The CYLE Team

Beware of this agent:

https://absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?337606-C-Y-L-E-(Cyle-Young-Literary-Elites)

I'm trying to submit to this agent, but the second of the three videos he wants me to watch isn't loading correctly. Based on the comments below about platform, it looks like he might not be a good fit for me anyway.

I queried Cyle last year with all 3 mss before he was listed here on Querytracker. Here are my stats for them:

EQ 2/19/18 (Venom)--same day rejection (Passed--mentioned I need to edit it more and work on show vs tell)

EQ 8/28/18 (Requery Venom)
ER 9/28/18 (Passed--not a good fit)

EQ 3/26/18 (Chain Reaction)
ER 4/29/18 (Platform rejection--need 10K followers.) I might requery him this summer since I've hit 10K followers in a year.

EQ 9/28/18 (Diplomatic Immunity)
ER 3/24/19 (Passed--same platform rejection.)

Wow I wish I read the comments before I submitted a query. If I get a response asking about social media I think I will just be honest and tell him that I have none. Submitted on 4/10/2019. Can't take it back I guess. Will update this when I get a response.

Genre: Dark Fantasy(I'm just going to put this because there is lots of death)
Word Count: 66,000