How to cite a chapter written by someone other than the book’s authors

Unlike an edited book, where each chapter has unique authors, usually you expect an authored book to have the same author(s) throughout. Thus, citing a chapter of an edited book is common, but as a general rule, citing chapters from authored books is not. For authored books, the whole book is referenced, with specific chapters included in the in-text citation as needed. This is true whether the chapters were written by the book’s authors or an outside contributor who isn’t given cover credit.

When a chapter in an authored book was written by someone other than the book’s authors, your instincts might tell you to cite it as if it were from an edited book—that is, citing the chapter authors in the author position and the book authors in the editor position without “Eds.” in parentheses. Doing so could cause confusion given that authored books with chapters written by outside contributors are very uncommon. APA Style readers are so accustomed to the format for citing a chapter in an edited book that they might mistakenly believe that you are in fact referencing an edited book and simply forgot to include the “Eds.” component. Also, if you are using a reference manager, it may not allow you to omit the “Editor” label from the reference.

To avoid potential confusion, the simplest solution is to cite the book as you would any other authored book, which is a reference format that readers can immediately recognize, but to add any additional information in the text.

For example, here are example references and in-text citations for two authored books that include chapters written by outside contributors:

In the text you can clarify the unique nature of your source by crediting the chapter author(s) in your narrative and identifying the chapter number as part of your in-text citation. Here are example citations of a direct quotation and paraphrased text from a chapter in an authored book written by an outside contributor:

The same principles apply if a contributor is credited as writing a smaller portion of a book, such as a text box, rather than an entire chapter. You would simply include the box number instead of the chapter number in your citation.

Sometimes outside contributors (particularly foreword authors) are given cover credit, typically as part of a “with” statement below the main authors’ names. In this case, the contributors are credited parenthetically in the reference. However, as with the previous examples, they are not listed among the authors in corresponding in-text citations.

Here are example references and citations for two authored books in which outside contributors are given cover credit:

If you are citing a portion of the book that was written by the outside contributor(s), you can mention them in text, as shown in these examples:

Chapters in authored books that are written by outside contributors are so rare that it can be confusing to know how to cite them properly, but hopefully this post will help you. If you ever find yourself in that situation and there’s something you’re not sure about, feel free to leave a comment below.