Although I’m not sure there’s a big enough market for self managed VRs to make a book worth while, I am a published author. 

All publish their fees so you can use a spreadsheet to determine the lowest cost solution.

I've bought a few of the BP published books, listen to the BP podcast fairly regularly and recently upgraded to a Pro membership. 

Is it fair to say that if I approach an architect with ideas for the floor plan and layout (sketched diagram), the price for publishing plans would be cheaper? 

If you want to publish email newsletters you'll need a proper newsletter tool like Activecampaign, Mailchimp, and so on.Biggest tip: Try a bunch of CRM tools and see which one you like.

If you wait until spring, BP is publishing a book on this very topic, written by yours truly.  

The city has also started publishing regular reports on the changes in crime by police district that you can find on the city's website here.Also the new mayor and police chief have done a fantastic job on starting to turn things around.

i.e. actual vs published FMR I am seeing a big difference in their published FMR’s vs what some section 8 properties are actually collecting($550 actual vs $1000-1150 published FMR).

There are a lot of great tools out there you can use to screen but I would suggest a platform that helps with not only listing the property (publishing it to 10+ other listing sites, which helps you to cast a wider net) but also comprehensive tenant screening which includes a nationwide criminal background check, credit check, eviction history check, and requires references for prior tenancy.

In addition, I searched for the publisher, and I was able to get in contact with her to ask more questions.