HarperCollins to Close Buffalo Warehouse in 2028 and Shift Work to Indiana
HarperCollins will close its Buffalo warehouse early in 2028, the publisher has announced. The decision follows a review of its distribution footprint, meaning the network of buildings where it stores books and sends them out to shops and online buyers.
The Buffalo site was formerly known as Harlequin Fulfillment Services. It is a 400,000-square-foot building, and about 100 people work there, according to Publishers Lunch, the trade newsletter that broke the news.
The work is moving to a much larger site. HarperCollins announced in August 2025 plans for a 1.6-million-square-foot supply chain logistics facility in Brownsburg, Indiana, set to open in 2028. The company put the project at a US$160 million investment and said the hub would create more than 400 supply chain logistics jobs. Publishers Weekly later reported that ground had been broken on the Indiana site.
A HarperCollins spokesperson told Publishers Lunch that Buffalo staff interested in moving will be able to apply for jobs at Brownsburg. Employees who do not move will be offered severance, a one-off payment that eases the end of a job, along with help finding new work. The company has not, in the material published so far, put a number on how many Buffalo roles will transfer.
HarperCollins describes the Brownsburg building as a state-of-the-art facility that will use the most advanced technology available to improve efficiency.
Why does a warehouse matter to a reader? A book can be written, edited and printed long before anyone holds it. Its last steps depend on a building full of pallets, scanners and packing lines, where a copy is picked, boxed and loaded onto a lorry bound for a bookshop or a front door. When that building changes, the books in it move too.
The Buffalo move also has a history at HarperCollins. Publishers Weekly reported in 2014 that the company's Canadian arm was closing its Toronto warehouse and moving fulfilment operations, a shift that was followed by distribution delays that the trade press covered in later years. Those episodes are a reminder that moving a warehouse is slow, careful work, and that readers feel the results in the weeks when orders go missing.
For now, the Buffalo building keeps working until its closure in early 2028. The Indiana hub, due the same year, will carry the job from there. Every book that reaches a reader on that route is still the product of a long chain, and this change shifts one of its links from New York to Indiana.
