The APA 7 book reference is short — author, year, title, publisher — but it changed in one way that still catches students trained on older guidance: there is no place of publication. APA 6 wanted the publisher’s city; APA 7 removed it, and a city sitting in your reference is now a reliable tell that the entry was copied from an out-of-date source. Around that core sit the variants this guide covers in full: editions, e-books and DOIs, edited books cited as a whole, chapters in edited books with their two-level format, and translated and republished works. Every rule follows the APA Style guidance published by the American Psychological Association. For automatic formatting, the APA Referencing Generator builds book references from your details; the APA referencing guide covers the wider system, and our pages on how to reference a book in Harvard style and how to reference a journal article in APA handle the neighbouring source types.
The whole book: author, year, title, publisher
The standard reference for an authored book is:
Calder, J. M. (2021). Thinking in systems: An introduction for social scientists. Routledge.
Work through the choices the example embodies. The author is surname first, then initials, with an ampersand before the final author where there are several — up to twenty authors are listed in full in APA 7 before the list is shortened with an ellipsis. The year follows in brackets. The title is italicised and in sentence case: only the first word, the first word of the subtitle after the colon, and proper nouns take capitals — the rest of that long title stays lower case even though the book’s cover prints it in capitals. The publisher is named as it appears on the title page, minus business words like “Ltd”, “Inc.” or “Company” — but keeping words that are part of the identity, such as “Press” in a university press. And there is no city, no country, no full stop problem to solve: if your source material or an old citation generator inserts “London:” before the publisher, delete it.
One omission rule mirrors the website format: if the author and the publisher are the same — common with professional bodies publishing their own manuals — the publisher is dropped from the reference rather than repeated, and the entry ends after the title.
Editions: brackets, not italics, and only when they exist
Where a book is not in its first edition, the edition statement goes in brackets immediately after the title, in ordinary type — not italicised, because it is not part of the title:
Priestley, A., & Nkomo, D. (2024). Research methods in education (4th ed.). Sage.
First editions carry no statement at all; silence is the first-edition statement in APA, and writing “(1st ed.)” is an error. A revised edition is given as (Rev. ed.). The edition matters beyond pedantry: content, pagination and even chapter authorship change between editions, so the edition you cite must be the edition you used, with its own year — citing the newest edition’s details against notes taken from the old one produces quotations and page numbers your marker cannot find.
E-books and DOIs: same reference, plus an identifier
APA 7 cites an e-book with the same reference as the print book. There is no “[e-book]” label, no format note, and no need to name the platform or device — the reference describes the work, not the screen you read it on. What an electronic version may add is an identifier at the end. If the book has a DOI, give it as a link, whether you read the book in print or on screen:
Calder, J. M. (2021). Thinking in systems: An introduction for social scientists. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003120456
The DOI in that example is illustrative of the form: “https://doi.org/” followed by the book’s registered number, with no full stop after it. If an e-book has no DOI but you read it on the open web rather than through a library database, end the reference with its URL instead. The important exception is the library database: an e-book read through your university’s database, with no DOI, is referenced exactly like the print book, ending at the publisher — database names and database URLs never appear in APA references, because they are delivery routes behind a login, useless to any other reader.
An edited book cited as a whole
When you are citing an edited collection itself — its scope, its introduction, the fact of its coverage — the editors stand in the author position with their role labelled:
Farrell, S. K., & Osei-Bonsu, M. (Eds.). (2023). The handbook of community mental health practice. Oxford University Press.
One editor takes (Ed.), several take (Eds.), and everything else — year, italic sentence-case title, edition if any, publisher, DOI if any — follows the authored-book pattern unchanged. Distinguish this carefully from the next case: citing the edited book as a whole is right only when your point is about the book as a project. The moment you use material from one contributor’s chapter, the chapter format applies, and it is the chapter author’s name your reader needs first.
A chapter in an edited book: two levels, one reference
The chapter reference is the format students most often truncate, because it contains two works nested together — the chapter you read, and the book that contains it:
Lindqvist, H. (2023). Crisis teams and the first seventy-two hours. In S. K. Farrell & M. Osei-Bonsu (Eds.), The handbook of community mental health practice (pp. 214–239). Oxford University Press.
Anatomise it. The chapter author comes first, with the year. The chapter title is in sentence case and — unlike the book title — is not italicised, because the chapter is a part, not a standalone work. Then the word “In” introduces the editors, whose names appear in the natural order of initials before surname — the reverse of the reference’s opening author position — followed by (Ed.) or (Eds.). The book title follows in italics and sentence case, and the brackets after it carry the edition if there is one and the chapter’s page range, in the form (2nd ed., pp. 214–239) when both exist. Publisher, and the book’s DOI if it has one, close the entry — note that the DOI is the book’s, since the chapter is located through the book.
Contrast this with a chapter of an authored book — one writer responsible for the whole volume. There is no separate chapter reference at all: you reference the book as a whole, under its author’s name, and if you want to point at a chapter you name it in your text or add the chapter number to the in-text citation. Building a two-level “In” reference for a single-author book is a category error markers spot immediately.
Translated and republished books, briefly
Two smaller variants complete the picture. For a translated book, the author and original title’s translation follow the standard pattern, with the translator named in brackets after the title:
Moreau, C. (2019). The quiet classroom: Silence and learning in early education (J. Whitaker, Trans.). Bloomsbury. (Original work published 2014)
The closing note records the original publication year, and in the text the citation carries both dates: (Moreau, 2014/2019). For a republished work — a classic reissued by a modern publisher — the reference uses the year of the edition you read, with the original year noted at the end in the same “(Original work published …)” form, and the dual-date in-text citation again: the reader always learns both when the work was written and which version you used.
In-text citations for books and chapters
Books take the ordinary APA in-text forms. Parenthetical: (Calder, 2021). Narrative: Calder (2021) argues that… With three or more authors, the in-text citation shortens to the first author plus et al. from the very first mention — (Priestley et al., 2024) — even though the reference list spells out up to twenty names. A direct quotation adds the page: (Calder, 2021, p. 87), or (Calder, 2021, pp. 87–89) for a passage spanning pages. Chapters in edited books are cited in the text under the chapter author’s name, never the editors’: (Lindqvist, 2023), with page numbers for quotations taken from the chapter’s own pagination. Edited books cited as a whole are cited under the editors’ names in the same way. One trap: the reference list entry for a chapter begins with the chapter author, so your in-text names and your list entries match one-to-one — if you find yourself citing an editor in the text for a chapter’s content, the wrong name is doing the work.
Help with APA books, chapters and the list they sit in
Chapter references are where APA lists most often break — editors in the wrong order, page ranges missing, cities left over from APA 6. If you would like the whole list checked, or help with the essay, report or dissertation chapter it supports, United Academic Help provides APA referencing and writing help from £20 per 1,000 words, with the full price agreed before work begins. Order via the website, email your brief to team@unitedacademichelp.uk, or get in touch on WhatsApp via our contact page.
Frequently asked questions
Do I include the publisher’s city in APA 7? No. APA 7 removed the place of publication entirely. A city before the publisher’s name means the reference was built to APA 6 rules or copied from an outdated generator.
Are book titles italicised in APA references? Yes — the book title is italicised and written in sentence case. Chapter titles, by contrast, are not italicised; in a chapter reference only the book’s title takes italics.
How do I cite one chapter of an edited book? Start with the chapter author and year, give the chapter title in plain sentence case, then “In” plus the editors (initials before surnames) with (Ed.) or (Eds.), the italic book title, the chapter’s page range in brackets, and the publisher.
Does an e-book reference differ from a print book? No. The reference is identical; add the DOI as an https://doi.org/ link if the book has one, or a URL if you read a DOI-less e-book on the open web. Books read through a library database without a DOI end at the publisher, like print.
What if the book’s author is also its publisher? Omit the publisher from the reference to avoid repeating the name. The entry ends after the title (and edition, if any).
How many authors are listed for a book in APA 7? Up to twenty in the reference list, in full. With twenty-one or more, list the first nineteen, an ellipsis, and the final author. In the text, three or more authors shorten to et al. immediately.