How to Cite a Book in APA
An APA 7 book reference is short: Author. (Year). Title in italics. Publisher. The 7th edition made books simpler — no more city and state before the publisher. Paste the ISBN into the generator and this is built for you, or here's the manual version.
The format
Author, A. A. (Year). Title of book in sentence case: Subtitle after the colon (2nd ed.). Publisher.
Martin, R. C. (2008). Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship. Prentice Hall.
Dweck, C. S. (2006). Mindset: The new psychology of success. Random House.
The pieces
- Author — inverted with initials. Two authors joined by &; up to 20 listed.
- Year — the copyright year of your edition, found on the copyright page.
- Title — italicized, sentence case, subtitle after a colon also starting capitalized. Edition in parentheses after the title, not italicized: (3rd ed.).
- Publisher — name only; APA 7 dropped the location. Multiple publishers are separated by semicolons.
Variations you'll hit
Edited book: editors take the author slot with (Ed.) or (Eds.): Born, J. (Ed.). (2013). … Chapter in an edited book: chapter author first, then "In" the editors and book: Alvarez, M. (2013). Chapter title. In J. Born (Ed.), Book title (pp. 45–67). Publisher. eBook: cite like print; add the DOI or URL at the end if it came from a database or the open web. Kindle/EPUB need no special label in APA 7.
Translated or republished classics add the translator and original year: (T. Author, Trans.; Original work published 1885) — and the in-text citation shows both years: (Ebbinghaus, 1885/2013).
In-text citation
(Dweck, 2006) for a paraphrase; (Dweck, 2006, p. 23) for a quote. Chapters in edited books cite the chapter author, not the editor. Full patterns: APA In-Text Citations.
Keep every citation you make.
A free account saves your citation history and organizes sources into projects with notes and tags.
Create a free account →Find the sources you should be citing.
Premium searches 250 million scholarly works by topic, recommends citations for your claims, and flags statements in your writing that need support.
Go Premium — $5/monthFrequently asked questions
- Where do I find the year and publisher?
- The copyright page — the back of the title page. Use the copyright year of your edition, not the printing year, and the publisher as named there.
- Do I still include the publisher's city?
- No — APA 7 removed locations. "New York, NY: Penguin" is APA 6; now it's just "Penguin."
- How do I cite just one chapter?
- If the book has one author throughout, cite the whole book (the in-text page numbers point to the chapter). If chapters have different authors (edited volume), cite the specific chapter with its own author and page range.
- Does an ISBN go in the citation?
- No — ISBNs never appear in APA references. But pasting the ISBN into our generator is the fastest way to build the citation, since it pulls the book's registry record.