At the start of each semester, special education junior D’Mya Harris said she avoids hitting the bookstores unless it’s ?absolutely necessary to save money.

“Amazon is my go-to website,” Harris said. “I always shop around and if it happens to be there then I’ll buy it.”

Textbook sales in stores have been declining throughout the past decade, said Mike Wylie, the assistant manager of Student Book Store, or SBS, 421 E. Grand River Ave.

He said part of the blame comes from professors and stores formulating other tactics to help students save money.

“All of that (decline) isn’t due to Amazon, it’s due to people going to course packs, it’s people using codes or things that a professor themselves put together,” Wylie said.

But MSU still has its share of students who stick to the stores. Human biology sophomore Mallory Wilson said the in-store experience helps prevent her from ordering the wrong books by mistake.

“I feel like you have a ?better idea of what you’re getting and you can actually see the books,” Wilson said.

Because a small fraction of students sell their books back, Wylie said SBS has made more rentals available. He said rentals usually are sold at about half the price of the original book.

“People who buy books would like to sell theirs back but if you segment that population out then there’s less books out there to sell back,” he said. “Our goal is that if we rent you a book you are saving real money on that book,” Wylie said.