Pierce Library: Citing Your Sources in APA 7th: Books and eBooks

How to Cite Books and eBooks

Books in Print

Book in Print (Basic Format)

Format:

Author(s). (Year of publication). Title of book: Capital letter also for subtitle. Publisher.

Example:

Lorde, A. (2007). Sister outsider: Essays and speeches. Crossing Press.

Book With Both Author(s) and Editor(s)

Format:

Author(s). (Year of publication). Title of book: Capital letter also for subtitle (E. Editor, Ed.). Publisher.

Example:

Austen, J. (2008). Emma (J. Kinsley, Ed.). Oxford UP.

Book with Editor(s) but No Author

Format:

Editor(s). (Ed/s.). (Year of Publication). Title of book: Capital letter also for subtitle. Publisher.

Example:

Leitch, M. G. (Ed.). (2019). A new companion to Malory. D. S. Brewer.

Book with No Author or Editor

Format:

Title of book: Capital letter also for subtitle. (Year of Publication). Publisher.

Example:

Encyclopedia of Indiana. (1993). Somerset.

Book with Translator

Format:

Author(s). (Year of publication). Title of book: Capital letter also for subtitle (T. Translator, Trans.). Publisher. (Original work published YEAR)

Example:

Foucault, M. (1988). Madness and civilization: A history of insanity in the age of reason (R. Howard, Trans.). Vintage-Random House. (Original work published 1961)

Encyclopedia or Dictionary Entry

See Encyclopedias and Dictionaries.

Religious Text

See Religious Texts.

eBooks

eBook (Accessed from Library Database)

Format:

Author(s). (Year of publication). Title of book: Capital letter also for subtitle. Publisher. DOI or Permalink [if available, skip if not]

Example:

Waldau, P. (2010) Animal rights: What everyone needs to know. Oxford University Press.

eBook (Accessed from Website)

Format:

Author(s). (Year of publication). Title of book: Capital letter also for subtitle. Publisher. DOI or URL

Example:

Speed, H. (1913) The practice and science of drawing. Seeley, Service & Co. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/14264

Heads up! If you download an eBook file, pay attention to the file type. Page numbers in re-sizeable formats like Kindle and ePUB cannot be used for in-text citations because they will vary from user to user. Instead, use the chapter number for in-text citations. By contrast, PDFs have stable page numbers that can be used for in-text citations.

eBook (Accessed from eReader)

Format:

Author(s). (Year of publication). Title of book: Capital letter also for subtitle. Publisher. DOI or URL [if available, skip if not]

Example:

Machiavelli, N. (2018). The prince (W. K. Marriott, Trans.). Library of Alexandria.

Heads up! Page numbers in eReaders cannot be used for in-text citations because they will vary from user to user. Instead, use the chapter number for in-text citations. Example: (Machiavelli ch. 1)

Book Chapters

Chapter or Article in an Edited Book

Format:

Author(s). (Year of publication). Title of chapter or article. In E. E. Editor & F. F. Editor (Eds.), Title of book: Capital letter also for subtitle (pp. pages of chapter). Publisher. DOI [if available]

Example:

Armstrong, D. (2019). Malory and character. In M. G. Leitch & C. J. Rushton (Eds.), A new companion to Malory (pp. 144-163). D. S. Brewer.

One Author

Format:

Last Name, First Initial.
or
Last Name, First Initial. Middle Initial (if provided in source).

Name Examples:

Anzaldúa, G.
Kendi, I. X.
Wallace, D. F.

Citation Example:

Anzaldúa, G. (2012). Borderlands / la frontera: The new mestiza (4th ed.). Aunt Lute Books.

Two Authors

Format:

Last Name, A. A., & Last Name, B. B.

Heads up! List authors by last name and initials. Separate authors with a comma and add an ampersand symbol (&) before the second author.

Example:

Wykes, M., & Gunter, B. (2005). The media and body image: If looks could kill. Sage.

Three to Twenty Authors

Format:

Last Name, A. A., Last Name, B. B., & Last Name, C. C.

Heads up! List authors by last name and initials. Separate authors with commas, and add an ampersand symbol (&) before the final author.

Example:

Nguyen, T., Carnevale, J. J., Scholer, A. A., Miele, D. B., & Fujita, K. (2019). Metamotivational knowledge of the role of high-level and low-level construal in goal-relevant task performance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 117(5), 879-899. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/pspa0000166

More Than Twenty Authors

Format:

Last Name, A. A., Last Name, B. B., Last Name, C. C., Last Name, D. D., Last Name, E. E., Last Name, F. F., Last Name, G. G., ... Last Name, Z. Z.

Heads up! List authors by last name and initials. If there are more than 20 authors, list the first 19 authors separated by commas. After the first 19 authors, replace remaining authors with an ellipsis (...), then end with the final author listed. 20 names should be listed in total.

Example:

Pegion, K., Kirtman, B. P., Becker, E., Collins, D. C., LaJoie, E., Burgman, R., Bell, R., DelSole, R., Min, D., Zhu, Y., Li, W., Sinsky, E., Guan, H., Gottschalck, J., Metzger, E. J., Barton, N. P., Achuthavarier, D., Marshak, J., Koster, R., . . . Kim, H. (2019). The subseasonal experiment (SubX): A multimodel subseasonal prediction experiment. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 100(10), 2043-2061. https://doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-18-0270.1

Group or Corporate Author

Heads up! Group or corporate authors may include companies, commissions, committees, organizations, government agencies, or any other group that does not identify individual members.

If the Group Author Is Different From Publisher

Format:

If the group author and the publisher are different entities, list the Group Name as the author.

Example:

Calgary Educational Partnership Foundation. (1996). Employability skills: Creating my future. Nelson.

If the Group Author and Publisher Are the Same

Format:

If the group author and the publisher are the same, follow the "No Author" rules instead.

No Author

Heads up! Remember that an author/creator doesn't necessarily have to be a person's name. It may be someone's initials, an organization or corporation, or a username on a social media site.

Format:

If a source has no author, skip the author and start with the title. Do not use "Anonymous" as the author name unless the work is signed as "Anonymous."

Example:

"How to Teach Yourself Guitar." eHow, Demand Media, www.ehow.com/how_5298173_teach-yourself-guitar.html. Accessed 24 June 2016.

One Author

Format:

(Last Name, Year, p. Page Number)

Example:

(Anzaldúa, 2012, p. 30)

Two Authors

Format:

(Last Name & Last Name, Year, p. Page Number)

Example:

(Wykes & Gunter, 2012, p. 53)

Three or More Authors

Format:

(First Author's Last Name et al., Year, p. Page Number)

Example:

(Nguyen et al., 2019, p. 880)

Group or Corporate Author

Format:

(Group Name [Abbreviation if Any], Year, p. Page Number)

If a group author uses an abbreviation, you can introduce the abbreviation in brackets the first time you cite them; in subsequent citations, you can use only the abbreviation.

Examples:

(Calgary Educational Partnership Foundation, 1996, p. 230)

(Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], 2019)
After the first citation: (CDC, 2019).

If your full citation for a group author starts with the title rather than the group's name, follow the "No Author" in-text citation rules instead.

No Author

Format:

(Title of Longer Work or "Title of Shorter Work," Year, p. Page Number)

Heads up! For in-text citations, shorten any titles to the first 2-4 words of the title.

Examples:

(Fair Housing, 1985, p. 15)

("How to Teach," 2016)

The first example above refers to a book, so the title is italicized to reflect that it is a longer work. The second example refers to a webpage, so the title appears in quotation marks to reflect that it is a shorter work, and we also skip the page number since websites don't have page numbers.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I format dates?

Many sources only require a publication year. For sources that require more information, dates should be formatted like this: Year, Month Day. Sources might provide a full date, only a month and year, or sometimes a season (such as Spring 2021); include as much information as the source provides. Do not abbreviate any month names.
Example: 2021, October 17.

If there is no date, use "n.d." in place of the date.

What is a DOI?

Digital Object Identifiers, or DOIs, are unique numbers or hyperlinks assigned to some online resources, such as journal articles, to make them easier to find.

If a DOI is provided for a source, include it at the end of your citation after any page numbers. In your References list, you should always format a DOI as a URL beginning with "https://doi.org/" followed immediately by the DOI number.

Example: For DOI "10.5642/jhummath.20170120," the URL version would be: https://doi.org/10.5642/jhummath.20170120

If no DOI is provided but a permalink or stable link is present, you can use that instead.

What if some information is missing?

If a source has no date, include the initials "n.d." (short for "no date") where you would normally put a date. If a source is missing any other information that you need for your citation, you can generally skip that element and move on to the next element in the citation.

Examples: Some sources don't have an author; in this case, we skip the author and start our citation with the title. Most academic journals are published in volumes and issues, but some only have volumes; in this case, we list the volume number and skip the issue number.

What if I don't know which source type I'm citing?

If you're not sure what type of source you're working with, don't worry! This is a very common challenge. Check out our page on Identifying Source Types.

What if I need to cite multiple sources by the same author?

References List: List multiple works by the same author in order of year of publication from earliest to latest. Usually, the year of publication will be enough to distinguish between sources. If the same author has published multiple sources within the same year, add letters to the end of the year and organize alphabetically to distinguish between them, e.g. 2019a, 2019b, 2019c.

In-Text Citations: Since in-text citations include the year of publication, no extra step is usually needed to distinguish between sources. If your full citation includes letters to distinguish between sources published in the same year, include the letters in your in-text citations as well.

How do I cite multiple sources in a single in-text citation?

You can separate multiple in-text citations with a semi-colon to cite multiple sources at the same time. List the in-text citations in the order you used them in your sentence or paragraph.

Example: (Bennett, 2015; Smith, 2014).

More Information on APA 7th

Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association
Call Number: BF76.7 .P83 2020 (Reference)
Copies are available at the Reference Desk

Pierce Library's APA 7th Quick Citation Guide
Downloadable PDF with sample citations (including in-text) for different types of sources and a sample Works Cited page.

APA Style
The official APA Style website from the American Psychological Association.
Purdue OWL APA 7 Formatting & Style Guide
Very thorough overview of APA 7th with examples for how to construct both in-text and Reference List entries.

This guide is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Content is adapted from the CSUDH APA Citation Guide and the Columbia College (BC) APA Citation Guide. Icons courtesy of Icons8.