When citing books in APA style, your citation should follow one of the basic formats below.
Book
As is common in APA format, write the title of the book in “sentence case.” In other words, capitalize only the first letter, any proper nouns, and the first letter of a subtitle (after a colon).
Author Last Name, First Initial. Middle Initial. (Copyright Year). Title of the book. Publisher. DOI or URL (if available – not all books will have one).
Sheingate, A. D. (2016). Building a business of politics: The rise of political consulting and the transformation of American democracy. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1537592718003882
If a book has two authors, put an “&” symbol between the names: Author, A. A. & Author, B. B.
If a book has three to twenty authors, separate names by commas and put an “&” symbol before the last author name: Author, A. A., Author, B. B., Author, C. C., & Author D. D.
APA does not require you to indicate whether the book is an electronic or print copy in your citation.
Edited book
For an edited book with no authors, list the editors in place of the author(s) and the abbreviation Eds. in parentheses following their names.
Editor, A. A., & Editor, B. B. (Eds.). (Copyright Year). Title of the book. Publisher. DOI or URL (if available)
Goodin, R. E., & Hans-Dieter, K. (Eds.). (1996). A new handbook of political science. Oxford University Press.
Chapter in an edited book
Edited books often consist of compilations of works from other authors. To cite a chapter or specific work from an edited book, you need to credit both the author of the chapter and the editors of the book. The title of the book is italicized, but the title of the chapter is not.
Author, A. A. (Copyright Year). Title of the book chapter. In A. A. Editor & B. B. Editor (Eds.), Title of the book (pp. #-#). Publisher. DOI or URL (if available)
Christians, C. G. (2011). Ethics and politics in qualitative research. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), The Sage handbook of qualitative research (pp. 61-80). Sage Publications.
More information
To see more examples and other situations of citing sources in APA style, see the library's online APA Citation guide. You can also find the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (7th edition) in the Knowledge Center’s reference collection and the Book Stacks. Purdue’s Online Writing Lab has a comprehensive guide to APA style.