How to Cite a Book in AMA Style (11th Edition)

To cite a book in AMA style (11th edition), list the authors as surname plus initials with no periods, then the book title in italics and Title Case, the edition if it is not the first, the publisher, a semicolon, and the year. There is no city. In your text, the book gets a superscript number in the order you first cite it.

Author AA, Author BB. Title of Book. Nth ed. Publisher; Year.

Drake RL, Vogl W, Mitchell AWM, Gray H. Gray's Anatomy for Students. 4th ed. Elsevier; 2020.

That pattern covers a textbook written by one set of authors. A chapter in an edited book, an ebook, a multivolume reference set and a book from an organization each change it slightly, and the 11th edition dropped one element the 10th required. Every example below comes from a university library's AMA 11 guide, checked against at least one other guide.

The AMA 11 rule for books

The AMA Manual of Style covers books in section 3.12. James Cook University Library's AMA 11th guide to whole books maps the three sections you need: 3.12.2 (reference to an entire book), 3.12.4 (reference to a chapter in a book) and 3.12.11 (electronic books, books online and audiobooks). The elements of a whole-book reference, in order:

A few of these rules need more detail than the table gives.

Author names. List every author when a book has one to six. With seven or more, list the first three and then "et al." The University of Southern California Libraries' AMA 11 reference list guide applies the same cutoff to editors, so a book with eight editors becomes three names, "et al," and "eds."

Title case for books, sentence case for chapters. USC's wording: for books, "capitalize the first letter of each major word, but not articles, prepositions of less than 3 letters, conjunctions, or infinitives." Chapter titles follow the article rule, which capitalizes only the first word, proper names, names of trials or study groups, and abbreviations. The book title is italic and the chapter title is plain.

Edition. Write the edition in Arabic numerals with "ed" and a period, and leave it out for a first edition. The University of Vermont Libraries' AMA guide to edited books gives the abbreviations for named editions: "Rev ed" for a revised edition, "New rev ed" for a new revised edition, and "American ed" for an American edition.

Publisher. Give the publisher's name as it appears on the title page. UVM's guide drops the periods after abbreviations such as Co and Inc, and says to write "Publisher unknown" when no publisher is named.

What the 11th edition changed

The 10th edition put the publisher's city and state before the publisher: Philadelphia, PA: Elsevier; 2020. The 11th edition removed it. The AMA Style Insider blog's preview of the 11th edition announced "the omission of publisher locations from references to books and reports," along with moving URLs to the end of electronic references. If a reference in your list has a city before the publisher, it was built from a 10th edition template, and the rest of the list probably needs checking too.

Authored book or edited book?

Before you write the first element, decide which kind of book you have, because it decides whose names go first. The UVM guide splits books into two groups: books "where all of the chapters are written by the same author(s)" and books "where the chapters are written by different people." The second kind is an edited book.

The cover does not always tell you. A "Third Edition" banner can look like an editor credit at a glance. UVM's test is the table of contents: if each chapter lists its own authors, the book is edited. If no chapter authors appear there, the people on the cover wrote the whole thing.

That gives you three reference shapes:

1. Authored book, cited whole. The authors go first, and there is no "In:".
2. Edited book, cited whole. The editors go first, followed by "eds." Use this when you draw on the book as a whole, which is rare in a clinical paper.
3. Chapter in an edited book. The chapter authors go first, then the chapter title, then "In:" and the editors. This is the shape you want almost every time you cite a handbook or a big clinical textbook, because you are using one chapter's content. JCU's AMA 11 guide to book chapters says to "cite each chapter you use separately."

Worked examples

1. Book with one author

Oliver L. Delirium. Harper Collins; 2011.

This is South College Library's AMA 11 book example. One surname, one initial, the italic title, then publisher and year. The reference ends with a period after the year. No page range is needed when you cite the book as a whole.

2. Book with two to six authors

Drake RL, Vogl W, Mitchell AWM, Gray H. Gray's Anatomy for Students. 4th ed. Elsevier; 2020.

All four authors appear, in title-page order, with commas between them and no "and" before the last. Middle initials run together with no space or period: Adam W. M. Mitchell becomes Mitchell AWM.

3. Book with seven or more authors

Wasserman K, Hansen JE, Sue DY, et al. Principles of Exercise Testing and Interpretation: Including Pathophysiology and Clinical Applications. 5th ed. Wolters Kluwer Health/Lippincott Williams & Wilkins; 2012.

Three names, then "et al" with a period at the end of the author block. The subtitle follows a colon and stays in Title Case, since it is part of the book title.

4. Edited book cited as a whole

Cameron P, Little M, Mitra B, Deasy C, eds. Textbook of Adult Emergency Medicine. 5th ed. Elsevier; 2020.

The editors take the author position, and "eds" follows the last name. A single editor gets "ed." Arkansas State University's AMA citation guide shows the single-editor form: Karjalainen TM, ed.

5. Chapter in an edited book

Relling MV, Giacomini KM. Pharmacogenomics. In: Brunton LL, Chabner BA, Knollmann BC, eds. Goodman and Gilman's The Pharmacological Basis of Therapeutics. 12th ed. McGraw-Hill; 2011:145-168.

Read it in four parts: who wrote the chapter, what the chapter is called (sentence case, no italics, no quotation marks), whose book it sits in ("In:" with a colon, then the editors and "eds"), and the book's own details. The year takes a colon and the chapter's page range follows with no space.

6. Chapter whose author also edited the book

Banasik J. Alterations in cardiac function. In: Copstead L, Banasik J, eds. Pathophysiology. 4th ed. Saunders Elsevier; 2010:429-460.

Banasik appears twice, once as the chapter author and once as an editor. Keep both. UVM's guide says to "always write out every author and every editor's name," even when the same person fills both roles.

7. Ebook with a DOI

Vieira AR. Genetic Basis of Oral Health Conditions. Springer; 2019. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-14485-2

A book with a DOI ends with the DOI, written as doi: plus the number, with no space and no final period. JCU's guide gives this example and adds that you "only include an accessed date if you are using a URL." A DOI gets no accessed date. The same pattern works for a chapter with its own DOI:

Karmakar M. Ultrasound-guided central neuraxial blocks. In: Narouze SN, ed. Atlas of Ultrasound-Guided Procedures in Interventional Pain Management. Springer; 2011:161-178. doi:10.1007/978-1-4419-1681-5_12

8. Ebook with a URL and no DOI

DiPiro JT, Talbert RL, Yee GC, Matzke GR, Wells BG, Posey LM. Pharmacotherapy: A Pathophysiologic Approach. 10th ed. McGraw-Hill; 2017. Accessed January 7, 2019. https://accesspharmacy.mhmedical.com/book.aspx?bookid=1861

Most ebooks a student reads through a library platform (AccessPharmacy, AccessMedicine, ClinicalKey) have no DOI. Use the book format you would use in print, then add "Accessed" with the date you viewed it and the URL. The date format is Month Day, Year. The URL comes last and takes no period after it.

Ebooks, page numbers and library platforms

Ebooks cause most of the confusion with book references, because the format you read and the format you cite stop matching. South College's guide puts the rule in one line: use the whole-book, chapter or different-author format that fits, "then include the accessed date and URL."

Three situations come up again and again.

The ebook has no page numbers. Reflowable ebooks often lack fixed pages. South College's note: "If the ebook version does not give page numbers for individual chapters, omit the page numbers from the citation." UVM adds an alternative for books that give chapter numbers but no inclusive pages: the chapter number may be used instead. Pick one approach and use it for every ebook chapter in your list.

The platform shows "Chapter 7" in the title. USC's online chapter example keeps the platform's chapter label: Relling MV, Giacomini KM. Chapter 7. Pharmacogenomics. That is how AccessPharmacy displays it. For a print copy, drop the label and give the page range. Copy what the version you read displays.

The library guides disagree on book DOIs. This one has no clean answer. JCU and Arkansas State both say to add a DOI to a book reference when the book has one. USC's guide says the opposite: "book citations do not include DOIs, only URLs and accessed dates." Our reading follows JCU, whose guide is mapped to the manual's section 3.12.11, and our generator adds the DOI. If your instructor or program follows a particular library guide, that guide wins, and either way, use the same approach for every book in the list.

Special cases

No author, or an organization as author

When an organization wrote the book, put it in the author position, written in full. When no person or organization is named as author, USC's rule is to "omit the author name field" and start with the title. JCU's example of a WHO publication shows the second case, with the organization appearing as publisher:

Health Worker Roles in Providing Safe Abortion Care and Post-abortion Contraception. World Health Organization; 2015. Accessed December 9, 2021. URL

Replace URL with the address you used. If the cover credits the organization as author and it is also the publisher, none of the AMA guides checked for this post gives a rule against naming it twice, and the WHO example avoids the repetition by leaving the author field empty. Either form is defensible; choose one and stay consistent.

One volume of a multivolume set

Levinson D, Ponzetti JJ, Jorgensen PE, eds. Encyclopedia of Human Emotions. Vol 2. Macmillan Reference USA; 1999.

Write "Vol" with no period after it. The volume comes after the title and before the edition. JCU's pattern shows the order: Book Title. Vol no. Nth ed. Publisher; Year. If each volume has its own title, add it after the volume number. Encyclopedia entries are a related case with their own rules, covered in our guide to citing an encyclopedia article in AMA.

Associate editors and other contributors

Large clinical references sometimes credit associate editors alongside the main editors. In the UVM guide they appear as a second group after the editors, labeled "associate eds." List them only when the title page gives them as a separate group, and copy the roles as printed.

StatPearls and other book-shaped databases

Some sources you read in a database are books in AMA terms. JCU cites StatPearls as a chapter in the book StatPearls:

Varacallo M, El Bitar Y, Mair SD. Rotator cuff tendonitis. In: StatPearls. NCBI Bookshelf version. StatPearls Publishing; 2019. Accessed October 24, 2019. URL

The same logic covers UpToDate, which South College describes as a chapter in the book UpToDate, edited by the topic's deputy editors. Our AMA citation generator guide has worked examples for UpToDate and Cochrane.

Citing the AMA Manual itself

A paper on reference style sometimes cites the manual. South College's in-text page gives a chapter reference for it:

JAMA Network Editors. References. In: AMA Manual of Style: A Guide for Authors and Editors. 11th ed. Oxford University Press; 2020:81-83.

The JAMA Network Editors are the group author, "References" is the chapter, and the page range is the part you used.

A book with no publisher name

Use "Publisher unknown" in the publisher position, as UVM's guide directs, followed by the semicolon and year as usual.

In-text citations for books

A book is cited in the text the same way as any AMA source: a superscript Arabic numeral, assigned in the order you first cite each source. USC's guide to AMA references within your paper gives the placement rule: the number goes "outside periods and commas" and "inside colons and semi-colons." A book you cite three times keeps the number it got the first time.

Citing a specific page. When you quote a book or point to one passage, put the page inside the superscript, in parentheses, with no space. South College's example is 5(p10), all of it raised. In Word, type the whole string, select it, and apply superscript once:

The same point appears in the textbook chapter on delirium.5(p10)

Here 5(p10) sits in superscript after the period.

Naming the authors in the sentence. One or two authors are both named, with the superscript after the names: "Relling and Giacomini1 describe..." For three or more, use the first author plus "et al": "Drake et al2 describe..." South College offers "and colleagues" or "and coauthors" as alternatives, and warns against "et al's"; rewrite the sentence to avoid the possessive.

For a chapter, name the chapter authors in your sentence, since they are the ones you are citing. The editors appear only in the reference.

Common mistakes and how to avoid them

• A city before the publisher. This is the 10th edition format. Delete the city, state and colon so the reference reads Publisher; Year.
• Citing the editors when you used one chapter. If you read chapter 12 of a handbook, the reference starts with chapter 12's authors. Citing the whole edited book hides who wrote the material and loses the page range.
• Italicizing the chapter title, or putting it in quotation marks. Only the book title is italic. The chapter title is plain sentence case.
• Title Case on the chapter, sentence case on the book. The two rules run in opposite directions, and reference managers often apply one to both. Check each title by hand.
• "In" with no colon. A few library examples drop it, but the patterns in the JCU, UVM and South College guides all use In: followed by a space.
• A space after the year's colon. Write 2011:145-168, with no space. UVM is explicit: "Do not enter a space between the preceding colon and the chapter page range."
• "1st ed." Leave out a first edition entirely.
• An accessed date with a DOI. Accessed dates go with URLs. A DOI reference stops at the DOI.
• Periods in initials. Mitchell A.W.M. becomes Mitchell AWM.
• An "and" before the last author. AMA separates every name with a comma.

Quick-reference table