Are there any sources of knowledge, books, podcasts, anything to prepare me for it?

there are a lot of un solicited offers from foriegn entitites these days.. and most are scammers. lure you in get you to pay some fees etc.If these contacts did not come through reliable sources and someone just hit you on the internet be quite cautious.I 

Also, as a follow-up, I'm not finding much in the way of auction sources.

Because I was able to step back and evaluate the process to see the critical moments where the mistakes were made that ultimately lead to the foreclosure.

I know that this aspect is critical, and it is one area I am most unsure about..

I wanted to cut the middle man and be the source.

Consider the source: I'm in the Bay Area and without even thinking about it I did indeed implicitly make that assumption because that's basically all we've seen if you take any 10 year average from the last 5 decades. 

Take advantage of all of the sources of information on this website.  

If anyone knows any good tools or sources to analyze deals, I'd love to look into them.

why as a wholesaler would you want to put homes under contract with all those liens on them especially if that kills the deal You wasting the time of buyers and sellers The liens are very common in this business Jyst trying to help other people to not just waste time saying we going to buy with cash if you don't know the house will close or not This is what causes wholesaling to get a bad name in my area If you are going to do this as a business it would be nice to know if it will close before lots of time is wasted on a deal that will not close I look at wholesaling different because I don't want to show my buyers a house that might not close I want to know it will close The wholesaler told me he did not know Lots of buyers I talked to in my area since have complained about wasting their time looking I am just posting this because it makes cash buyers irritated if they waste their time looking I like being able to tell my buyers title search done and they can close It cost 130 to do a title search This way part of the work is done when we go to closing at my title company I'm not being critical, just trying to give insights to other investors in my area and what happens when you just put houses under contract