AMA generally groups books into two categories:
Books with chapters written by multiple authors are called edited books, because they have one or more editors who recruit other experts to write specific chapters.
For example, the book on the left is an edited book, while the one on the right was written by one person. You can sometimes tell the difference between the two of them if the word "editor/editors or the abbreviation "Ed./Eds." appear on the cover.
It can still be confusing to tell if a book is an edited book or not just by looking at the title. For example, the non-edited book on the right says "Third Edition" which means that this is the third version of this book published, but it could be easy to look at it quick and think that this is an edited book.
It's much more effective to look at the table of contents, because this is where you will see who wrote each chapter. In an edited book, the author(s) for each chapter will be listed. No authors will be listed in the table of contents for a non-edited book.
You will also need to consult the table of contents of an edited book to get all of the information that you need to correctly cite it as this diagram illustrates:
Edited Book (Book with chapters written by individual authors)
Type the name of the chapter author in inverted (last name first) format without periods. Do not use "and" between names; use a comma to separate more than one name, and place a period at the end.
If the chapter has one to six authors, list all of the authors in the order that they appear.
SEE ALSO: Section 3.7 of the AMA Manual of Style for more information about authors.
Treat chapter titles the same way you would article titles. Capitalize the first letter of the first word and any other proper names (e.g. United States) as well as any abbreviations that are normally capitalized (e.g. DNA). Place a period at the end of the title. Do not capitalize the first letter of the first word of the sub-title if one exists.
Do not use quotation marks (unless they are part of the original title) and do not put the title into italics.
SEE ALSO: Section 3.12.4 in the AMA Manual of Style for more information about chapter titles.
Type the word "In" followed by a colon and a space. Type the name of each editor in inverted (last name first) format without periods. Do not use "and" between names; use a comma to separate more than one name. Type ", ed" if there is only one editor and ", eds" if there is more than one. Place a period at the end.
If the book has one to six editors, list all of the editors in the order that they appear.
SEE ALSO: Section 3.12.5 of the AMA Manual of Style for more information about editors.
Type the title of the entire book. Capitalize the first letter of each major word, including 2 letter verbs such as "is". Place the entire title into italics. Use a colon to separate the main title and the subtitle.
Do not capitalize articles, prepositions of 3 or fewer letters (e.g. as, off), coordinating conjunctions (e.g. and, or, for, but, yet, so), or the "to" infinitives.
Note that an editor can also be an author of a chapter as in this example. Always write out every author and every editor's name.
List all editions of a book, but do not indicate a first edition. Do not use Roman numerals.
Abbreviate "New revised edition" as "New rev ed," "Revised edition" as "Rev ed," and "American edition" as "American ed."
SEE ALSO: Section 3.12.7 of the AMA Manual of Style for more information on edition numbers.
Enter the full name of the publisher as shown on the title page (even if the name of the publisher has changed since the book was published), with the following changes: omit the period after any abbreviations (e.g. Co, Inc, Corp and Ltd); abbreviate the words Company, Corporation, Brothers, Incorporated, and Limited even if they are spelled out; use an ampersand (&) instead of the word "and"; and delete periods even if they appear in initials.
Place a semi-colon at the end of the publisher's name.
Do not include the location of the publisher.
If there is no publisher's name available use "Publisher unknown" in the place of the publisher's name.
SEE ALSO: Section 3.12.8 and 13.7 of the AMA Manual of Style for more information about publisher names.
Write out the full date e.g. 2019. Do not abbreviate the date e.g. '16.
If you are not required to include page numbers in your reference, place a period after the date. If you are including page numbers, place a colon.
SEE ALSO: Section 3.12.9 of the AMA Manual of Style for more information about publication dates.
Use Arabic numerals, unless the pages referred to use Roman numerals, such as in the introductory sections of a book. Do not enter a space between the preceding colon and the chapter page range. Type a period after the chapter page range.
Inclusive page numbers are preferred, but the chapter number may be used instead if the book does not provide inclusive page numbers.
SEE ALSO: Section 3.12.10 of the AMA Manual of Style for more information about page numbers.