SOUTH HADLEY — Independent bookstores have been hearing for years that their days are numbered, that between the Internet and chain stores, the margins for brick-and-mortar booksellers aren’t good enough.

But this month, the Odyssey Bookshop is marking its 60th anniversary, having survived two fires in the 1980s, some financial ups and downs over the year, and most recently the onslaught of COVID-19, which in 2020 compelled the store to open a $60,000 GoFundMe campaign to stay afloat.

But store owner Joan Grenier says the Odyssey, thanks to the generosity of readers and the hard work of staff, has bounced back pretty well in the last couple of years, almost reaching its pre-pandemic levels of sales and again offering many live talks and presentations with visiting authors.

“We’re almost back to where we were in 2019,” Grenier said during a recent phone call.

Now, as part of the 60th anniversary celebration, the Odyssey will host a discussion with one of its key publishing clients — a New York company that in turn is marking its 100th anniversary as the largest and oldest independent, employee-owned book publisher in the country.

On Thursday, Nov. 9, at 7 p.m., W. Drake McFeely, the former chairman and president of W.W. Norton & Company, will come to the Odyssey along with Julia Reidhead, the company’s current chairperson and president, to talk about Norton’s 100-year history and the ins and outs of the book business.

McFeely is also the author of “Books That Live: Norton’s First One Hundred Years,” a history of the publisher. He’s got local roots, too: He’s a 1976 graduate of Amherst College and grew up partly in South Hadley, where his late father, the historian and biographer William S. McFeely, taught at Mount Holyoke College from 1970 to 1986.

Reidhead, meantime, began her career at Norton as a traveling college sales representative, and her territory included South Hadley, Grenier notes.

“She’s been in our store before,” Grenier said, who added that the Odyssey sold textbooks for decades before moving out of that part of the book business before the pandemic.

Norton & Company is well known for its extensive anthologies on literature — English, American, African American, Latino — and for working closely with a long list of acclaimed writers, including current ones such as Michael Lewis, Richard Powers, Joy Harjo, Andre Dubus III, Jill Lepore, and the Valley’s Martín Espada.

“They’re an amazing publisher,” said Grenier. “There’s no fluff in their catalog.”

And, she noted, as an independent book publisher that’s been employee-owned since the 1960s, Norton has outlasted many other independent publishing houses long since absorbed in corporate mergers.

“They’re a great partner to help celebrate our 60th anniversary,” she said.

Steve Pfarrer can be reached at spfarrer@gazettenet.com.