People in the future will look back at photos of libraries with shelves full of print books and wonder why those idiots in the past (i.e. us) wasted so much paper. You can fit all the books you want on a single computer or e-reader in digital form. This also means that it’s more important than ever for students to know how to cite an ebook. Today, we look at how to do this using APA referencing (7th edition).
The good news is that citing an ebook is like citing any other source with APA. As such, simply give the author’s surname and the year of publication for the source in parentheses at the end of the relevant passage of text:
Some commenters resent recent social changes (Glover, 2010).
When the author is named in the text, simply give the year of publication immediately afterwards. If quoting an ebook directly, you should also give page numbers after the quoted text:
Glover (2010) says socialism is ‘the kid brother of Marxism’ (p. 4).
If an ebook doesn’t have page numbers, give a chapter, section or paragraph number instead when quoting a source directly.
For an ebook version of a book previously published in print, meanwhile, you should include the original date of publication as well:
Copperfield narrates his own story (Dickens, 1850/2004).
Note that the original date of publication comes first here.
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As with all sources, APA requires that ebooks are listed with full publication information in a reference list at the end of your document. The basic format for an ebook here is:
Surname, Initial(s). (Year). Title of book. PI Publications. URL or DOI
John Glover’s If I Had a Country, for instance, would be listed as follows:
Glover, J. (2010). If I had a country. PI Publications. https://www.free-ebooks.net/ebook/If-I-Had-a-Country
Another feature of APA referencing worth keeping in mind is that it uses a sentence case title format in the reference list. This is why we’ve capitalised each main word in If I Had a Country when we write it here and on the book’s cover, but we’ve used lower case in the reference above.
For a republished ebook edition, meanwhile, simply include the original date of publication in parentheses at the end of the reference:
Dickens, C. (2004). The Personal History, Adventures, Experience and Observation of David Copperfield the Younger of Blunderstone Rookery (Which He Never Meant to Publish on Any Account). Project Gutenberg. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/766/766-h/766-h.htm (Original work published 1850)
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