AUTHOR'S NOTE: I'm not going to include the common "I don't own these characters; no copyright infringement intended" disclaimers, because they don't do anything from a legal point of view. You might as well hotwire a stranger's car and drive away while saying "I don't own this car! No car theft intended!" NOw here's the fanfic. I hope you like it.
Carefully, Judy scanned the bookshelf. She was pretty sure that by now she'd read every science-fiction novel the library had, but maybe there was just one book she hadn't read yet. The silence of the library made it easier to focus on her search than it would have been in a noisy bookstore, and Lucy gave the books every bit of attention she had. As she read the titles, she noticed one that seemed pretty interesting, and - more importantly - new. Killing Time Itself, by Ben Cooper. She pulled it out and opened it to the first page, not bothering to give the back of the cover a chance to spoil the plot. If the first page wasn't interesting then it didn't really matter if the back cover text was.
"I wouldn't recommend that one. That writer is a disgrace to your town."
Judy turned to the left, where the voice had come from. A man was standing there. His facial features made him look a bit like the villain in the latest Star Trek movie,but he was dressed differently, of course. As he studied the shelves of science-fiction novels, he looked even more concentrated than she'd been until he interrupted her.
"He is?" she asked.
"Very much so. Don't waste your time with him."
"Can you recommend something better?"
The man turned to her. "No, I can't. I never read science-fiction." He turned back.
"Well, you've read Killing Time Itself. And it looks like you're searching for something new to read."
"This is research for work. And I haven't read the book you're holding, and never said I did. I've never even heard of it before." His gaze locked onto another novel. "Oh, there it is." He took it out.
Judy was starting to feel curious. "Then how can you tell it's bad? And that the author is a local?"
He turned to her again, a look of exasperation on his face."The paper is stiff, and a very bright shade of white. Serious publishers don't use that kind of paper, it's for vanity publishers and small ones. Then look at the font they used for the title. Papyrus. The font of choice for amateurs who want to look serious. Only vanity published books look like that, and they are infamous for poor quality control."
Judy stared at him.
"And obviously he's a local," the man went on. "Look at the size of this science-fiction section." Judy did. It wasn't particularly big, she'd give him that. It mostly consisted of worn old copies of Asimov, Bester, and other classics. "They clearly don't spend a lot of money on new science-fiction books," the man said. "They don't even have any Peter F. Hamilton. So why buy this one? Because it was written locally, possibly by a friend of the librarian. In short, the writer is bad at what he does but refuses to accept it, and has the book vanity published."
Silence reigned for a couple of seconds.
"Wow," Judy said, a bemused smile on her face. "You're clever."
"That was elementary," the man said as he walked to the counter where a librarian was sitting. As Judy went back to scouring the bookshelf for new reading material, she heard the man applying for a library card to check out the book.
She looked where the book he'd taken had been. Although she hadn't gotten a good look at it, she knew these shelves well enough to be able to tell what was missing.
The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle.