If you’re writing an academic paper and need to cite a Kindle book, you’ll quickly notice a problem: there are no pages, and therefore no page numbers. The wrong approach is to complain about the device for not being a printed book; the better approach is to figure out how to make it work for your research, so you can take advantage of ebooks now instead of waiting for academia to catch up.
Basic style guidelines
First, the basics. The Chicago Manual of Style says this about books published electronically:
“If a book is available in more than one format, cite the version you consulted. For books consulted online, list a URL; include an access date only if one is required by your publisher or discipline. If no fixed page numbers are available, you can include a section title or a chapter or other number.”
Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice (New York: Penguin Classics, 2007), Kindle edition.
The APA recommends a similar approach to citing ebooks:
For the reference list entry, you’ll need to include the type of e-book version you read (two examples are the Kindle DX version and the Adobe Digital Editions version). In lieu of publisher information, include the book’s DOI or where you downloaded the e-book from (if there is no DOI). For example:
Gladwell, M. (2008). Outliers: The story of success [Kindle DX version]. Retrieved from Amazon.com
[...]
To cite in text [when page numbers don't exist], either (a) paraphrase, thus avoiding the problem (e.g., “Gladwell, 2008″), or (b) utilize APA’s guidelines for direct quotations of online material without pagination (see Section 6.05 of the manual). Name the major sections (chapter, section, and paragraph number; abbreviate if titles are long), like you would do if you were citing the Bible or Shakespeare:
One of the author’s main points is that “people don’t rise from nothing” (Gladwell, 2008, Chapter 1, Section 2, para. 5).
The MLA approach to ebooks is quite similar:
When citing eBooks, you should [follow] the guidelines for citing nonperiodical web publications, found in section 5.6.2c (pp. 197-189) of the MLA Handbook:
Author’s Last Name, First Name. Title of Book. Place of publication: Publisher, copyright date. Source of eBook. Web. Date of Access.
How to get around a ban on citing ebooks
Some professors might refuse to allow ebooks in citations, either because they’re being mulish or because they want everyone to use the same (print) edition for convenience’s sake. If that’s the case, you can use one of the following methods to convert a Kindle location to a print edition’s equivalent page number. (The first two come from this Kindleboards discussion.)
- (The less precise way.) Convert your current location into a percentage of the book, and multiply that by the total page numbers of the print edition. For example:
- Book has 300 locations and you’re at 200; divide 200 by 300 to get .67, or 67%.
- Find print version on Amazon or another bookstore and look for total pages.
- Multiply total pages by the percentage; if the print book is 250 pages, then: 250 * .67 = 167.5, or pages 167-168.
Use with caution, as this will pretty much never give you the exact page number.
- (The more precise way.) Find a unique phrase in the text that’s very near the section you want to reference. Now go to Google Books or Amazon and search inside the book for that phrase, and you’ll usually be able to find the exact page number you need.
- (The lazy way.) Use this form. It should provide a fairly accurate estimation, and can also be used to convert page number to location.
Just remember that no matter which approach you take, you need to make sure you’re not referencing a different edition, since the content may have changed considerably.
(Photo: flaxmanlibrary)
By Booksprung » How long is a location in a Kindle ebook? December 1, 2010 - 11:54 AM
[...] looking up information on how to cite Kindle books in research papers, I noticed that one key bit of info seems to be missing (or at least I [...]
By Cite the Kindle « JURN blog December 2, 2010 - 7:16 AM
[...] How to cite a Kindle ebook? [...]
By Tweets that mention Booksprung » How to cite a Kindle ebook -- Topsy.com December 2, 2010 - 11:00 AM
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Antônio Xerxenesky and cyd losekann, pcolegrove. pcolegrove said: How to cite a Kindle ebook http://j.mp/fWrQ3Z [...]
By Hayley January 12, 2011 - 8:37 AM
This information is very useful. Although I use the Kindle for iPad Version 2.3.1, so how should I list this Kindle version? Perhaps just “Kindle for iPad version”?
Thanks for your input.
By Chris Walters January 12, 2011 - 8:51 AM
@Hayley: Personally, I prefer the Chicago Manual of Style approach over the APA, which means I would just write “Kindle edition” and leave off the reference to the specific platform. My reasoning is regardless of which Kindle app you use, you’re still accessing the exact same file with the same location numbers, so “Kindle edition” will suffice.
By Tamara Peyton February 6, 2011 - 8:44 PM
Hayley it doesn’t matter which Kindle version you use to reference an ebook. Just as you don’t say which browser you used to look at a website. The Kindle is the version, it doesn’t matter if it is Kindle Desktop, Kindle DX, Kindle for IpAd, etc.
The problem arises not with citations and referencing, but with quotation. Because you cannot give a fixed reference to a page or paragraph (as the paragraph and locator will change based on the font size someone uses, the best you can do, as suggested here, would be to use a percentage. Kindle gives you this percentage by default. This is how I do it and it works well for me so far.
By Johnny Alvarez May 20, 2011 - 4:34 AM
There is actually a way to find the page number. If you press the menu button on your ebook, you press go to and it list the number of pages. While it doesnt show page numbers exactly you can more or less guess and see if you are right
at least more exact this way.\
By Johnny Alvarez May 20, 2011 - 4:35 AM
I forgot to say that it allows you to put the page number and sends you directly to that page.
By Nonette G. Tsang November 6, 2011 - 8:44 AM
Johnny thanks! I needed this information for a paper I am writing.
By Chris Walters May 20, 2011 - 1:16 PM
Thanks, Johnny! This post was written before the recent Kindle update that introduced page numbers, when there was no way to do that. It’s probably not as useful now to people with the most current Kindle software, although Amazon doesn’t provide “real page numbers” for all ebooks, so at least sometimes you’ll still have to do it the hard way.
By Joe September 11, 2011 - 12:06 AM
Not all kindle books have page attributes…
By Jayde September 28, 2011 - 7:34 PM
I guess finding useful, reiallbe information on the internet isn’t hopeless after all.
By Nonette G. Tsang November 6, 2011 - 8:45 AM
Yes, I agree with you. There are people out there who are willing to share info. Thanks guys!
By Joe November 15, 2011 - 5:59 PM
The page numbers depend on how big of text you are using though,
By The Year of the Boar by Anneke Majors (a review) | A Motley Vision June 14, 2011 - 2:20 AM
[...] zero idea how to cite quotations. The best source I could find for how to cite a Kindle ebook was this website which said to reference sections. I’m still figuring out how to figure out what section [...]
By Citing Kindle Editions, Chicago Style | BiblioShock July 17, 2011 - 3:14 PM
[...] Booksprung has some thoughts on citing ebooks HERE. [...]
By 電子書籍と著作権 (4) — Amazon « Nob's Blog December 15, 2011 - 9:41 AM
[...] How to Cite a Kindle eBook [...]
By Lori Cole January 19, 2012 - 5:27 PM
I totally love you guys, and love the “3. Lazy Way” form.
Life has become so much simpler, well, until Kindle Fire gets page number update.
By Judith Abbott March 27, 2012 - 10:17 AM
Professors aren’t just being mulish about this, unfortunately. The basic purpose of a footnote is to allow readers to find the passage for themselves for any one of a number of purposes (my students thought of nine or ten when I asked). I just spent (wasted) half an hour trying to find a Kindle citation from a master’s thesis. One of our responsibilities is to check those footnotes. I failed. So I sure hope Amazon comes up with an actual-page indicator soon.
By Chris Walters March 27, 2012 - 10:31 AM
Without sounding too cavalier (I hope), it seems to me like the author of the thesis failed, not you. Kindle location numbers are absolute, regardless of whether you access a Kindle edition on a Kindle device or through one of Amazon’s apps, so at minimum the thesis author should have simply provided a location number. Then you could have told your Amazon device/software to go directly to that location number.
Amazon now adds “real” page numbers to its more popular and recent editions, which can solve a lot of these citation problems. But when there’s still no traditional page number, I think it would be helpful (or “not mulish,” ha ha) if professors would accept Kindle location numbers instead of demanding a print page analogue. If we accept that a Kindle edition is a real edition–which maybe isn’t technically true, but for practical purposes it is–then Kindle location numbers *are* equivalent to page numbers in any other edition.
[edit:]
…and I just realized that you probably meant you tried to find the Kindle equivalent in a printed edition, which is why you commented that it’s not mulish to demand printed page numbers. I misread it (I think) and assumed you were trying to find a location in a Kindle text. Sorry about that! In defense of your teaching/grading strategies, I *do* mention that some professors might require specific editions for citation purposes for the sake of convenience, not because they’re anti-ebook. But in those cases, I think it’s the student’s responsibility to figure out the correct print page analogue.