Rewrite and Republish Out-of-Print Books
Copyright on books lasts something like 70 years, so books published before 1937 are eligible for republishing by anyone if the copyright has not been renewed (which does not happen often).
Of course, most of the knowledge written and published before 1937 is rarely directly applicable to today's modern times. Some re-writing will have to be done on these old works, but modern word processors can make this job easier.
For instance, someone reportedly republished a book on stock investments from the 1920's. They performed a 'search and replace' function via Microsoft Word to automatically replace the names of specific industries and companies with today's industries and companies.
Some books may need to be completely retyped by hand, which can take considerable time. Some books may be scanned page by page, or even two pages at a time, since most scanners today have accurate OCR (Optical Character Recognition) technologies. OCR means the scanner software analyzes the text in the scanned image, and converts it to editable text instead of un-editable text in an image.
Once the masterpiece has been reworked and updated for today's chic, anyone can republish the old work via lulu.com, which then also feeds listings into amazon.com. After that, it is up to the writer how much promotional work they want to do for sales.
It is still a true adage that promotional book work equals sales.
Think Bigger When Thinking of Flips
Flipping homes is such a common activity now, how many television shows feature the process?
I once read or heard Donald Trump say that flipping a $100,000 home and flipping a $100 million commercial development property is the same type of work. The only differences are in scale and complexity. However, they are similar in project management skills, attention to details, budgeting, cracking a whip on contractors, and in risk.
The risk should be considered the same in both scenarios, but the rewards are the biggest difference. A $100,000 home flip gives you a much more limited potential reward than on a $100 million flip.
So think big! Go big! Flip big!
You do not have to be in Las Vegas or New York City to flip a big commercial development.
Any medium sized town in America's heartland will do. Pick any city with 40-80,000 people, drive around, and you are bound to find an empty big-box retail store. You will probably find an old strip mall even attached. The area will be covered in graffiti and decrepit.
This is your goldmine!
Get information from the owners, the whole lot has probably been on the market for years. Get facilities, site plans, zoning information, etc.
Research the golden concept that will almost guarantee the success of your commercial flip: new urbanism.
In a nutshell, new urbanism involves higher density design than "island" stores and suburban neighborhoods. Think of constructing four-story buildings across your abandoned lot.
Each four-story building should have retail shopping/restaurant spaces on the first floor, commercial office spaces on the second floor, and residential apartments/condos on the upper floors. Basement parking is a huge plus, and should also be considered.
Consider bike paths, a plaza for public events, a fountain that kids can play through, and a little park in your development. The more reasons you give people to come interact in your development, the more successful your flip will be.
The most successful commercial flips involve work, shopping, entertainment, services, special public events, activities for all ages (2-99 years old), managed transportation solutions, and living spaces.
Plan these things, approximate where the buildings and public access ways will go, then approach an architect for some preliminary site designs and preliminary sketches of what your buildings may look like and how they might be arranged. You are not looking for detailed plans, since this is too expensive and imprudent at this time.
Get cost estimates from your architect to demolish old buildings, prep the site, and to develop the land and buildings. Go ahead and be generous at this point. Add a humble developer's hut/office in public view. This will be your point of contact and your sales office, which will be important to recoup your investment.
Take your plans, your budget, your overall concept, and find investors. Banks may or may not be willing to fund this, especially if you have no prior experience with big commercial developments.
Think outside the box. Look to rich local businessmen, treat them to a dinner and a half-hour presentation of your idea. It should not take long, they will either get the concept and see that you have the passion to follow through, or not.
Keep in mind phases. You will not construct all the buildings in a day. Plan on two buildings to go up as soon as possible, and plan for the profit on those buildings to help fund the other buildings.
The best aspect of flipping big time is not just the huge rewards at stake, it is both the free publicity buzz you will get from your project (local news loves these projects), and the hero status you will earn in the city for transforming an eyesore into a cherished space for decades.
