• 2-minute read
• 16th July 2015

How to Reference Ebooks – APA Style

The American Psychological Society’s (APA) referencing system is commonly used in the academic world, especially the social sciences. It provides a way to cite sources in your work, helping your reader to follow your essay.

But the the internet means that referencing systems like APA have had to ad rules for online sources. Ebooks are one such example, and it is important to know how to properly cite such texts if you’re using them in your work.

To help out, then, we’ve prepared this quick guide on how to reference ebooks using APA style referencing (7th edition), as knowing how to do this will make it much easier to compile a high quality reference list.

Citing an Ebook in APA Referencing

In-text citations for ebooks are identical to those used for print books, with the author name and date of publication provided in parentheses:

Citations are simple (Smith, 2019).

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.

Ebooks in an APA Reference List

An APA reference list should include full publication detail for every source you have cited, ordered alphabetically. In the case of ebooks, the basic format is:

Surname, INITIAL(S) (Year). Title. Publisher. DOI or URL

The ‘DOI’ here is a digital object identifier. If your ebook doesn’t have one, give a URL instead. You would thus list an ebook in your reference list as follows:

Author, A. N. (2015). Books on the internet. PI Publications. https://doi.org/10.978.12345/99991

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)

We hope this has answere3d your questions about how to reference ebooks using APA style. You can find out more about referencing and how to improve your academic writing by checking out the other articles on our blog.