A while back it was announced that the American Booksellers' Association would be moving their main hotel to Brooklyn when BEA returns to New York next June. The reason? Pretty easy to figure out: the costs of staying in Manhattan continue to climb with no signs of letting up, and the ABA doesn't have the budget to keep pace. But as the New York Sun's Leon Neyfakh reports, some booksellers across the country are already somewhat wary about the commute to and from Brooklyn.

"I would probably get a hotel in Manhattan," said Gary Hunt, the owner of Iconoclast Books in Ketchum, Idaho. "Coming from way out of town, I don't want to be doing a lot of internal taxi drives and subways and things like that. I'd rather walk, or at least be closer to the action. I wouldn't stay in a hotel in Brooklyn if I was going to be in New York for three or four days." And Chris Doehblin, owner of Labyrinth Books in Manhattan, said the Brooklyn plan sounded "absurd," and that he will recommend his out-of-town bookseller friends find their own accommodations.

But ABA's chief operating officer, Oren Teicher, said the Brooklyn option was the best bet in light of the high rates for hotel rooms in Manhattan. "We're dealing with a constituency of independent businesspeople who come to the convention on their own dime," he said. "With rates 100% higher than they've been in the past, we feared we wouldn't have anywhere near the kind of attendance that we hope to have."