The basic real estate book you'll pull off your local book store shelf typically assumes and requires that you've an essential knowledge of numbers, finance and an aptitude for analysis and decision making. The followings are some of the basic real estate book guidelines one may follow.

1) Before resorting to a large investment in a home study investing program, buying a book on real estate is often a far cheaper solution so you can understand what's required to become a real estate investor, and provides you with a fundamental knowledge of investing in real estate itself. You should recognize up front that real estate is not a liquid investment. Property will be sold depending on the area, and it may take months to do so, so be prepared if you're investing in a fix and flip manner to have lots of cash reserves on hand to carry the property until it is resold. 

2) Any real estate book worth its salt will recommend you to partner with a trustworthy investment real estate broker, otherwise known as Realtor's. Finding the right broker that can save your money and your time as well, because they can act as your Buyer's Agent to help locate problem investment properties and distressed homeowners that may sell at a substantial discount.  

3) Another fundamental teaching of a great real estate book is that it should address how you need to consider your cash flow situation while investing.  It should also provide you with specific steps or a blueprint of how to plan on finding, flipping, and/or renting your properties, as well as advice on how to creatively access capital available to investment business owners to make sure you have sufficient capital in hand to meet any short-term losses, or potential market hiccups.

4) Another avenue any great real estate book should address is how you should structure your investment business and coordinate the acquisition, resale, or rental of your properties with specific information and workflow charts (otherwise known as a process map), rather than glossing over the issue and speaking about what you should do (without showing you how to do it).

5) Another segment of any great real estate book should differentiate between the fluff and hype so common with commercials today about the tremendous upside to investing, and make you aware of the potential risk...more specifically, you'll want to ensure it provides you with a "way out" and strategies that minimize any risk so you can maximize your returns.

6) You should decide what type of real estate investment business plan is suitable for you. Before jumping into real estate investing altogether, selecting a real estate book that provides you with a review of real estate investing as a side business - or full time business - is critical.  By accomplishing this, you'll receive a thorough research on each form of the investment niches available, get a strong understanding of what's involved with each, and allow for you to find one strategy and stick to it.

Finally, the real estate book you choose should be strategic in nature, orienting you to real estate investing as a business rather than a hobby, is highly endorsed, and maintains a focus for you to build an investment empire without using your cash or your credit, in a joint venture manner, and also promotes that you look for "digits" of the deal (not pictures), because numbers are the backbones of the real estate investing.