The Coven

Larry Coven, disguised in a fake moustache, in the movie The Rat Thing. Image courtesy of Relentless Productions.

“I first started buying and selling books when I was at college,” said Larry, who has sold through AbeBooks since 1998. “I became an actor and I still am when I can get work . While I am waiting for acting jobs to come along, bookselling is a much nicer way to earn an income rather than waiting tables.

“I’ve done many things and I used to review books for major papers like the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times. I’ve even acted in a couple of horror movies. There was one called The Laughing Dead (written and co-directed by S. P. Somtow) and a slasher movie called Hack O’Lantern. Aside from that, I’ve been an extra in Spiderman and appeared in Somewhere in Time, the Christopher Reeve movie, and also acted in small independent movies. I’ve done TV too, things like Thirtysomething and The John Larroquette Show, and I’ve got a commercial running at the moment.

“All of this has meant that I’ve met a lot of interesting people. I met Ray Bradbury who signed books for me. Clive Barker, I got to know him quite well. I started out at the The Second City Theatre in Chicago doing improv and I did that with people like Shelley Long, George Wendt (Norm on Cheers) and Jim Belushi.

“I also remember sitting in a bookstore in Chicago with Stephen King signing books for me. In the end, I just had to sell them because they became so valuable. I’ve owned an asbestos version of Stephen King’s Firestarter and that went for over $1,000. I should have held on to it because now it's worth over $10,000. I also inherited a US first edition of The Phantom of the Opera in its dust jacket which made it very valuable.

“I think the best time for horror books was the pulp era in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s when you had people like HP Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard writing. However horror is still published on a large scale and there are specialist publishers like Ash-Tree Press in the UK and Subterranean Press in the US. I like to sell limited editions from these types of publishers.

“Some people ask me about my name, Coven, but it’s just a coincidence. My grandfather came from Russia and he changed the family name from Kagan to Coven so he couldn't be tracked down by his family back in Russia.”

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