How to Cite a Book in APA
APA 7th edition book citations are deliberately short: author, year, italic title, and publisher. No place of publication — APA removed it in the 7th edition.
The APA book format
The template for a reference-list entry is:
Author, A. A. (Year). Title of the book in sentence case (Edition). Publisher Name.
- Author: surname and initials. For an edited book, the editor sits in the author position with (Ed.) or (Eds.) after the name.
- Title: sentence case and italic, including the subtitle after the colon. Only the first word, the first word of the subtitle, and proper nouns are capitalised.
- Edition: if the book is not the first edition, add it in parentheses straight after the title — (6th ed.). The edition note is not italic.
- Publisher: name only, no city. If the publisher is the same as the author (common with organisations), leave the publisher out.
- DOI: if the book has one, add https://doi.org/… after the publisher, with no full stop at the end.
Worked examples
Three authors
Brown, P. C., Roediger, H. L., III, & McDaniel, M. A. (2014). Make it stick: The science of successful learning. Harvard University Press.
A later edition
Creswell, J. W., & Creswell, J. D. (2023). Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches (6th ed.). SAGE.
Edited book
Harris, J., & Green, S. (Eds.). (2022). Handbook of study skills in higher education. Routledge.
In-text citations
Parenthetical: (Brown et al., 2014) — three or more authors shorten to et al. from the first citation. Narrative: Creswell and Creswell (2023) set out the three approaches. For a quote, give the page: (Kahneman, 2011, p. 89) style — author, year, page.
Common mistakes
- Adding the publisher’s city — that was APA 6th edition, not 7th.
- Capitalising every word of the book title instead of using sentence case.
- Italicising the edition note along with the title.
- Citing a single chapter as if it were the whole book — a chapter in an edited book has its own format, with the chapter title in sentence case (not italic) and the book title italic after “In”.
Generate it instead
Fill in the details once and copy the finished reference — formatted, with italics and hanging indent preserved.
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Check your reference against your institution’s guidelines — lecturers sometimes vary the style.
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