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How do I reference a book/ebook in APA Style?

Last Updated: May 09, 2017  |  3208 Views

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Please see the general examples below for referencing an entire book. For more information, please see page 202 in the APA manual. For information on how to cite a chapter in an edited book, please visit "How do I reference a chapter of an edited book/ebook in APA Style?".

Author, A. A. (year). Title of work. Location: Publisher.

Author, A. A. (year). Title of work. Retrieved from http://www.xxxxx

Author, A. A. (year). Title of work. doi:xxxx OR http://dx.doi.org/xxxxxxx  OR https://doi.org/xxxxxxx

Editor, A. A. (Ed.). (year). Title of work. Location: Publisher.

Entire Book, Print Version

American Psychological Association. (2010). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association. Washington, DC: Author.

  • See page 203, e.g. #18 of the APA manual.
  • In-text citation: (American Psychological Association, 2010, p. X)
  • If the print book has a DOI assigned to it, replace the publisher location and name with the DOI, as shown in the third example above. See "Book References" in “Books and Book Chapters: What to Cite” from the APA Style Blog for information.
  • In this example, the publisher is the author, so "Author" is all that's needed to note the publisher. If the publisher is different than the author, please list the name of the publisher e.g., Oxford University Press.

Entire Ebook 

Gladwell, M. (2008). Outliers: The story of success [Kindle DX version]. Retrieved from Amazon.com

Patterson, K., Grenny, J., McMillan, R., & Switzler, A. (2012). Crucial conversations: Tools for talking when stakes are high (2nd ed.). Retrieved from http://www.books24x7.com/books24x7.asp

OR

Patterson, K., Grenny, J., McMillan, R., & Switzler, A. (2012). Crucial conversations: Tools for talking when stakes are high (2nd ed.). Retrieved from the Books24x7 database.

  • Keep in mind that, "if the book was read or acquired through an online library (e.g., Google Books, ebrary, NetLibrary) and not on an e-reader device, omit the bracketed information from the reference” (Lee, 2011, para. 2). If you accessed the ebook through the RRU Library’s subscription to an online database, such as Books24x7 or ebrary, that direction applies to your reference, which means that you don’t need to note the version of the book after the title of the resource in the reference.
  • If the ebook has a DOI assigned to it, please provide the DOI at the end of the reference. If the book's DOI is presented as a URL (e.g., http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/s15506878jobem4904_15), provide the full URL in the reference without the "doi:" identifier. The URL should not be hyperlinked. For more information about DOIs, please visit "What is a DOI and how is it used in APA style?".
  • The standard APA Style approach to referencing resources without DOIs from a subscription-based database is to provide the database’s home page URL after the “Retrieved from” (American Psychological Association, 2010, p. 191). However, if you accessed a subscription-based database by going through the RRU Library’s website, rather than directly from that database’s home page, you had to log in to gain that access. The requirement to log in means providing the database’s home page URL isn’t a useful step for RRU students, and providing a direct URL to the resource via the Library's access isn’t useful to anyone outside the RRU community. Therefore, to simplify the process of creating references, students can provide either the home page URL for the database or name the database as shown above. This advice is based on the American Psychological Association's (2009) "DOI and URL Flowchart".
  • See "How Do You Cite an E-book" and "How to Cite Part of a Work" from the APA Style Blog for more information on formatting in-text citations to ebooks.
  • First in-text citation: (Patterson, Grenny, McMillan, & Switzler, 2012, Chapter 2, Dialogue)
  • Subsequent in-text citation: (Patterson et al., 2012, Chapter 9, How to choose)

References

American Psychological Association. (2010). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (6th ed.). Washington, DC: Author. 

Lee, C. (2011, June 3). How do you cite an e-book (e.g., Kindle book). Retrieved from http://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2011/06/how-do-you-cite-an-e-book.html

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