To cite sources in a non-fiction book, use the system your publisher asks for and keep to it from the first chapter to the last. The MIT Press asks for numbered endnotes and a bibliography in its books for general readers; an academic monograph may use notes or author-date citations; some trade books key each note to a page and a phrase instead of a number.
EdCitation publishes this guide. The rules below come from the author guidelines and permissions pages of the MIT Press, the University of Chicago Press, Princeton University Press, the University of Michigan Press, Penguin Random House UK and Carcanet, all read on 26 September 2026. None of it is legal advice.
EdCitation's tools do the clerical half of the job and none of the writing: Cite a source builds each entry from a DOI, an ISBN or a web address, Find sources finds the scholarship behind a claim you need to check, and Verify references looks up a finished list. EdCitation never writes any part of anyone's book.
Which citation system should a non-fiction book use?
The one in your contract or your editor's instructions. Every guide read here asks for one system used consistently, never two mixed, and four are in use.
| System | How the reader finds the source | Who asks for it |
|---|---|---|
| Numbered endnotes and a bibliography | A superscript number, the note at the back | The MIT Press for trade books; Michigan by default |
| Numbered footnotes and a bibliography | A number, the note at the foot of the page | Chicago and Princeton accept it; Michigan on request |
| Unnumbered notes keyed to page and phrase | No mark in the text; each note opens with a page number and a few words of the sentence | Trade authors who want the text uncluttered |
| Author-date citations and a reference list | (Surname year, page) in the text | Scholarly books, where the press allows it; EdCitation builds it in Chicago 18 |
Notes keyed to the page
Asked about "trailing phrase" notes in a family biography, Chicago's editors pointed to the Manual's section on notes keyed to page numbers, as a system for writers who do not want the text's flow interrupted (University of Chicago Press, n.d.-d). The free contents of the 18th edition list sections on unnumbered notes and on notes keyed to line or page numbers; the sections themselves are for subscribers, and we did not read them (University of Chicago Press, n.d.-b). Page numbers exist only once the book is typeset, so such notes are finished in proof.
Footnotes or endnotes
The MIT Press (2022) asks trade authors for endnotes, not footnotes, restarting at 1 in each chapter. The University of Michigan Press (n.d.) wants endnotes in the manuscript and asks you to raise footnotes with your acquiring editor first. Their history is in who invented the footnote; linked notes in ebooks, in how to write and publish an ebook.
What do publishers ask of non-fiction authors?
Complete, consistent citations, notes made with the word processor's own notes function, and permissions cleared by the author before the manuscript goes in.
| Publisher and guide | Citation system | Notes and lists | Permission needed for |
|---|---|---|---|
| MIT Press, trade books (2022) | Notes and bibliography only; no author-date | Endnotes by chapter; no bibliography if notes are complete | Prose over 300 words; any poem or lyric |
| MIT Press, full guidelines (2024) | Notes or author-date; notes for a general audience | Endnotes | The same 300-word line |
| University of Chicago Press | Notes or author-date, never blended | Footnotes or endnotes made in Word; unlinked notes rejected | Beyond short prose and a few discussed lines of verse |
| Princeton University Press | Chicago preferred; author-date if the editor agrees | Numbered by chapter; no op. cit.; one bibliography | No formula; decorative epigraphs and lyrics |
| University of Michigan Press | Chicago, sometimes MLA or another style | Endnotes by chapter; every citation listed, every entry cited | Copyrighted text, art, letters; cover images always |
| Penguin Random House UK | No author guidelines published | Not stated | Licenses quotation from its books, sometimes gratis |
A trade list and a scholarly list at one press
The MIT Press publishes both kinds. Its trade guidelines, written for a general audience, allow only notes and a bibliography and forbid author-date citations (MIT Press, 2022). Its full guidelines offer both systems but send general-audience books to notes, and in author-date books keep notes for discussion, never for lists of citations (MIT Press, 2024).
University presses
Chicago's manuscript guide says to use notes or author-date "without switching back and forth or blending them", and a book with notes but no bibliography must still send one for the copyeditor (University of Chicago Press, n.d.-f). Princeton University Press (n.d.-b) leaves the choice to your editor, bans op. cit. and loc. cit. in favour of a short title, and wants one consolidated bibliography. Michigan asks you to fact-check the manuscript and make every reference complete and current. What replaced the Latin shorthand is in ibid., op. cit. and loc. cit. explained.
We found no house guide for authors on Penguin Random House UK's site, only its page for people quoting Penguin books, so the trade column rests on the MIT Press. Ask your editor for the house style sheet before you set a note.
What does the Chicago Manual say about notes and bibliographies?
Chicago has two systems: notes and bibliography, with sources cited in footnotes or endnotes and gathered in a bibliography, and author-date, with short citations in the text leading to a reference list. Notes and bibliography is Chicago's other system, and EdCitation does not build it; Cite a source builds Chicago 18 author-date, with APA 7, MLA 9, Harvard, IEEE and Vancouver.
Bibliography, reference list or further reading
Chicago keeps "reference list" for author-date, where each entry answers a citation in the text. A bibliography goes with notes, may list works the text never cites, and may leave out some it does (University of Chicago Press, n.d.-c). For author-date books the press's guide adds: list only what is cited, and put wider reading under its own title, such as "Further Reading". The lists across styles are compared in reference list, bibliography or works cited, and Chicago's past in the history of the Chicago Manual of Style.
An ISBN in the entry
Chicago's Q&A allows an ISBN at the end of a bibliography entry to pin down the edition, using three editions of Daniel James Brown's The Boys in the Boat (University of Chicago Press, n.d.-e). It speaks of bibliographies; for an author-date reference list, ask your editor.
How is an academic monograph cited differently from a trade book?
An academic monograph is written for specialists and reviewed by them, so it carries the full apparatus and may use author-date; a trade book is written for general readers, so its sources usually sit in endnotes the reader can skip.
On permissions, Chicago's page says fair use is easier to argue for scholarly books and small print runs (University of Chicago Press, n.d.-a), and Princeton, as a scholarly publisher, encourages its authors to assert fair use firmly where it applies. A widely sold trade book has less of that room.
When do you need permission to quote in a book?
When a quotation goes beyond what fair use in the United States or fair dealing in the United Kingdom allows. No publisher can fix that line in law, so each sets a working rule, and the author clears and pays for permissions.
What the copyright bodies say
The U.S. Copyright Office (n.d.) says no set number of words, lines or pages is safe, and that even a small extract can fail if it is the "heart" of the work. The Intellectual Property Office (2021) allows fair dealing for criticism, review or quotation with sufficient acknowledgement, and asks how "a fair-minded and honest person" would have used the work.
What publishers set as working rules
- The MIT Press: permission for prose over 300 words, and for every poem or song lyric, whatever the length.
- Chicago: for scholarly works, short prose and three or four lines of verse, sometimes one or two, need none when the book discusses them. The page still cites the Manual's 15th edition, so read it beside your contract.
- Princeton: no formula of words or lines (Princeton University Press, n.d.-a); a merely decorative epigraph needs permission, and it recommends seeking permission for lyrics (Princeton University Press, n.d.-c).
- Michigan: a cover image never rests on fair use, and permission should cover nonexclusive world rights, all languages, all editions including electronic.
- Penguin Random House UK (n.d.): it does not rule on fair dealing and advises asking anyway.
- Carcanet Press (n.d.), a poetry publisher: up to 10 lines of a poem, or extracts to 25, free if no more than a quarter of it; prose to 250 words, or extracts to 800.
Carcanet points to the Society of Authors' guidance, which we could not read: its old page is gone and the new site refused us.
How do you keep source records while writing a book?
One record per claim, made when you read the source. Chicago's 18th edition gives research-tracking its own sections, among them citing the right version and keeping a permanent record.
- Log the claim with its source: the sentence, the page, and whether you quoted, paraphrased or summarised (paraphrase, quote or summarise).
- Record the edition by ISBN or DOI. Brown's three editions carry three ISBNs.
- Copy quotations word for word, with the page.
- Keep each web address and a dated copy. Chicago asks you to confirm URLs; the MIT Press, to paste them rather than retype.
- Note the permission status of every long quotation, poem, lyric and image.
- Make each entry in Cite a source, from the DOI or ISBN you logged.
- Run the whole list through Verify references before delivery.
Checking a claim with Find sources
EdCitation's Find sources looks through about 300 million published works and takes a subject or the claim itself. Given "the 1936 Berlin Olympics were staged as Nazi propaganda", it reported 634,176 records. First came Aleksandr Naumov's 2021 article on the Games and Nazi Germany's soft power, in Voprosy Istorii, then Jules Boykoff's 2023 book The 1936 Berlin Olympics: Race, Power, and Sportswashing; David Clay Large's chapter in The Palgrave Handbook of Olympic Studies was fourth. The ninth, from Choice Reviews Online, carries a book's title, Hitler's Olympics, but is a review. Open each record before your book leans on it.
How does EdCitation help cite sources in a book?
For building and checking a book's sources, EdCitation is the best tool we know, because it looks every entry up in a publisher's or library's record and never composes one; a chatbot has no such record to consult. These runs were made on 26 September 2026.
Three editions of one trade book
From the Viking hardcover's ISBN, 9780670025817, Cite a source returned, in Chicago 18 author-date:
Brown, Daniel James. 2013. The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Viking.
That entry stands, and the paperback's ISBN, 9780143125471, gave the same with Penguin Books, 2014. The movie tie-in's, 9780593512302, came back as Boys in the Boat, from "Penguin Publishing Group", with no edition. Chicago's Q&A gives that edition as Penguin Books, "Movie tie-in ed.", so correct it:
Brown, Daniel James. 2023. The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Movie tie-in ed. Penguin Books.
The APA 7 versions, rerun on 27 September 2026, set the title in sentence case, as APA 7 asks, and kept Americans and Berlin: The boys in the boat: Nine Americans and their epic quest for gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. The movie tie-in's still began "Boys in the boat", so add the opening "The" to that one.
A monograph and a web page
The DOI of Susan M. Bielstein's Permissions, A Survival Guide, the book Chicago's permissions page recommends, gave an entry that stands. The Copyright Office's fair-use page came back with the office as author, and in Chicago 18 author-date as:
U.S. Copyright Office. n.d. "More Information on Fair Use." Accessed September 26, 2026. https://www.copyright.gov/fair-use/more-info.html.
Checking the whole list
Six Chicago author-date entries, for Bielstein, both Brown editions, Boykoff, Large and Keith Rathbone's 2020 article from the same search, went into Verify references and all came back verified: four against a publisher's record, both Brown editions against a library catalogue. Its verdicts are verified, "check this" or not found; retracted papers carry a flag, and a reference it could not reach is marked that way, never as not found.
What is free, Pro and Max
The three tools used above cost nothing and need no account. For an author-date manuscript, References from a file, a Pro tool at $8 a month, takes the Word file or PDF, looks up each reference in its list and pairs every in-text citation with an entry. The Library catalogues textbooks and scholarly books, and Max, at $24 a month, opens more than 5 million books to read or borrow, gathered by EdCitation in one place. Plans are on Pricing. No tool here makes notes, clears a permission or writes a sentence of your book.
Quick questions
Should a non-fiction book use footnotes or endnotes?
Whichever your publisher asks for. The MIT Press wants endnotes for trade books, Michigan wants endnotes unless your editor agrees otherwise, and Chicago accepts either.
What are notes keyed to page numbers?
Notes with no number in the text: each note at the back opens with a page number and a phrase from the sentence it supports, so the text reads uninterrupted.
Does a non-fiction book need a bibliography?
Not always. The MIT Press and Princeton drop it when the notes give full details, though the University of Chicago Press still wants one sent for the copyeditor.
How many words can I quote in a book without permission?
No law sets a number. The MIT Press asks for permission above 300 words of prose and for any poem or lyric; Chicago lets scholarly books quote short prose they discuss.
Can EdCitation make Chicago footnotes for my book?
No. EdCitation's Cite a source builds Chicago 18 author-date and five other styles; for notes and bibliography, work from the Manual or your publisher's style sheet.
References
- Carcanet Press. (n.d.). Permissions. Retrieved September 26, 2026, from https://www.carcanet.co.uk/copyright-and-permissions/
- Intellectual Property Office. (2021, January 4). Exceptions to copyright. GOV.UK. https://www.gov.uk/guidance/exceptions-to-copyright
- MIT Press. (2022). Guidelines for authors writing trade books [PDF]. https://dhjhkxawhe8q4.cloudfront.net/mit-press/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/04175959/Trade-Guidelines_2022.pdf
- MIT Press. (2024). Author guidelines: Full version [PDF]. https://dhjhkxawhe8q4.cloudfront.net/mit-press/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/22110729/MITPress_Author_Professional_Guidelines_2024.pdf
- Penguin Random House UK. (n.d.). Permissions. Retrieved September 26, 2026, from https://www.penguin.co.uk/about/work-with-us/rights-and-permissions/permissions
- Princeton University Press. (n.d.-a). Guidelines for fair use and works in the public domain. https://press.princeton.edu/resources/guidelines-for-fair-use-and-works-in-the-public-domain
- Princeton University Press. (n.d.-b). Manuscript preparation guidelines for standard word processing software. https://press.princeton.edu/resources/standard-manuscript-preparation-guidelines
- Princeton University Press. (n.d.-c). Permissions guidelines. https://press.princeton.edu/resources/permissions-guidelines
- University of Chicago Press. (n.d.-a). Author's permission guidelines. https://press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/copyright.html
- University of Chicago Press. (n.d.-b). Chapter 13 contents: Source citations: Overview. The Chicago Manual of Style Online (18th ed.). https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/book/ed18/part3/ch13/toc.html
- University of Chicago Press. (n.d.-c). Citation, documentation of sources (Q&A: bibliography and reference list). The Chicago Manual of Style Online. https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/qanda/data/faq/topics/Documentation/faq0445.html
- University of Chicago Press. (n.d.-d). Citation, documentation of sources (Q&A: trailing-phrase notes). The Chicago Manual of Style Online. https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/qanda/data/faq/topics/Documentation/faq0232.html
- University of Chicago Press. (n.d.-e). Citation, documentation of sources (Q&A: ISBNs in a bibliography). The Chicago Manual of Style Online. https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/qanda/data/faq/topics/Documentation/faq0460.html
- University of Chicago Press. (n.d.-f). University of Chicago Press manuscript preparation guidelines. https://press.uchicago.edu/resource/emsguide.html
- University of Michigan Press. (n.d.). Author's guide. https://press.umich.edu/For-Authors/Author-s-Guide
- U.S. Copyright Office. (n.d.). More information on fair use. https://www.copyright.gov/fair-use/more-info.html