Q. CMOS says to use the city listed for the publisher on the title page or copyright page of the book. If more than one city is listed, use the first one. Our magazine publishes a list of science books in each issue. One of the major publishers is Springer. Most of the Springer books we list have “Berlin Heidelberg New York” on the copyright page—the only place I can find a location listed. We traditionally have listed New York, as we are an American publication. However, some Springer books we list say only “Dordrecht, The Netherlands” on the copyright page. Should we cite different cities depending on what is listed on the copyright page? This looks inconsistent to me—to list different cities for the same publisher.
A. It may be annoyingly inconsistent for Springer to publish books in different countries, but no, it wouldn’t be right to say that a book was published in New York if in fact it were published in Dordrecht, or vice versa.