How to Cite Books Correctly: Tips and Examples

Do you already know the basics of proper citation and are now faced with the challenge of correctly citing a book in your work? So you don't make any mistakes with your source citations, we explain all the details of correctly citing a book in this article.

As you already know, you must properly mark all sources you reference in an academic work to avoid plagiarism. This includes both a reference directly in the main text and the corresponding entry in your bibliography.

For all the following information and examples, keep in mind that in addition to the generally applicable rules for correct citation, there may be additional requirements from your university. It's best to inform yourself about this as well so that all sources in your work are correctly referenced.

First Step: Selecting Your Citation Style

First of all, you should decide which citation style, such as Harvard or the German Citation Style, you want or need to use in your work. You should also inform yourself about these styles so that you can use them confidently. Nevertheless, there are some special features of books, which are probably the most common source in academic work, that we would like to present to you.

Even though depending on the citation style chosen, the type of source citation in the main text (Harvard) or in the footnote (German Citation Style) varies, all relevant information about the book must be provided in the bibliography at the latest. You can usually find all the information needed for this on the title page or in the imprint of the respective book.

In the following, we show you various examples of how source citations in footnotes and in the bibliography must look according to the German Citation Style. For all examples, please note that there may be deviations in detail depending on your university from the source citations shown here. Therefore, before you start your work, you should inform yourself about your university's specific requirements regarding citation according to the German Citation Style.

 

We now present the individual components of a correct source citation in detail. The components include:

• Author
• Year (publication year)
• Title of the book
• Volume (if the book is part of a larger work)
• Place of publication
• Edition
• Publisher

 

Author
Of course, the author's name must be mentioned when citing a book. This is usually done according to the pattern “Last name, First name”, and you should inform yourself, especially if your book has multiple authors, how the specific citation looks in your citation style (see, for example, Harvard or German Citation Style). In some cases, a book may not have an author. In this case, you can either specify the institution that wrote the book (if available), or, if you really cannot find an author, use the abbreviation “n.a.” However, you should avoid not specifying an author if possible.

Year
For the year, the publication year of the book must be given in the bibliography. Please note that the publication year is not necessarily the one indicated in the copyright notice.
Note: If you cite works by the same author that also appeared in the same year, you can indicate the difference by a letter after the publication year (e.g., 2020a, 2020b, etc.).

Title
As you can probably imagine, this is where the title of the book and any subtitle should be given.

Volume
If the book is part of a work divided into multiple parts and thematically related, the corresponding volume number must also be noted (abbreviation “vol.”).

Edition
The term “edition” refers to all copies of a book that are printed together. New editions are printed when either the current edition is sold out or the book's author wants to publish an expanded or revised version of the work.

Place of publication
The place of publication is where the book was published, which is usually the location of the publisher. Both the city and country are always given, and for American cities, the corresponding state. If more than one location is listed in the book, there are several possible notations for the source citation. A “/” can be used as a separator, for example (“Munich / Berlin”).

Publisher
Books are always published by publishers who reproduce and distribute the work. The name of this publisher must accordingly also be noted in the bibliography.

 

After the basics of academic work comes empirical research

Now you've learned the basics of academic work and the general structure of an academic work. In the following chapters, we'll show you step by step what research work looks like when you want to support it with empirical research.

 

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Next chapter:
Chapter 7 - Empirical or theoretical final thesis?

• The difference between an empirical and a theoretical final thesis
• When should you write a theoretical, and when an empirical final thesis?