There are a couple of drawbacks to having a book published, the main one being that most people assume that you're earning JK Rowling-style loot, and expect you to stand every round. The truth is that most writers are as broke as Delhi orphans, and it's wasting all their time writing that has them that way.

Which is why, while most writers want you to buy a brand spanking new copy of their latest book, and preferably in hardback, said writers will generally be found haunting the murkier corners of your local second-hand bookshop. They're addicted to books, after all -- the writing is just a symptom of a particularly bad affliction -- and they can't afford to pay top dollar.

For a writer, or any serious reader, a library is too formal, offering too mainstream a selection, whereas a good second-hand bookshop is a potential goldmine in which you might well stumble over a nugget you didn't even know you were looking for.

But why bother, says you, when you could simply order the book in a chainstore, or on Amazon? To the true book-lover, it's the difference between wandering the city streets at midnight hoping to meet a soulmate, or just heading straight for a brothel. Romance and hope and mystery, versus cold, cynical satisfaction.

Those who prefer their books perfect, without broken spines and turned-down corners, probably prefer their people the same way; without a history, without character, without failings. Connoisseurs of second-hand bookshops don't call them second-hand books. They're "pre-loved".

Still, haunting second-hand bookshops takes on a whole different aspect if you've published a novel yourself. If you're Burke, Declan, you're suddenly flitting past the 'A-D Fiction' section with your eyes averted, on the off-chance that you'll see -- you'd hardly miss it -- your precious baby sitting on a shelf with a €4.50 sticker on the front.

Now, you could tell a writer that his or her actual baby is ugly, or stupid, and he or she will probably shrug -- that's a simple matter of genetics, after all. But to give away a tale he or she has so lovingly crafted? You might as well stab them in the eye.

At least, that's how it goes for the first while, until you finally build that little bridge and get over yourself.

I have a special bookshelf at home, one on which I keep the books I know I'll be re-reading for the rest of my life. So far it's home to eight books: Peter Pan, The Catcher in the Rye, Slaughterhouse Five, The Lord of the Flies, Treasure Island, The Heart of Darkness, The Magus and The Double Tongue. I'd say the entire set cost me no more than €30 in total, each one pre-loved.

Yes, in these straitened times, it makes sense to shop for your books at reduced prices. But for the book-lover, it's not about the money -- it's about the searching and finding, the romance of faith and hope and blind luck, and all those things we need even more these days than a few extra euro.

One of my favourite books is Farewell to the King, by Pierre Schoendoerffer. It's a good story, but what I love about the copy I found is that someone went to the trouble of binding its naked, coverless text in cheap brown faux-leather that doesn't even have a title on it.

It was like stumbling across a crippled infant in a basket amid the bulrushes. That's one book that will never again want for a home.

Declan Burke's latest novel, The Big O, is available at all good second-hand bookstores

- Declan Burke