Books are useful items that you use for crafting and enchanting items in Minecraft. They can be found in various places in the world or crafted by you.
As long as you have enough paper on hand, you can craft a very large amount of books to use for enchanting.
In this article we will show you how to craft and all the ways you can use them.
Minecraft Book Recipe
- 3 paper
- 1 leather
Getting both of these ingredients is fairly easy to do even in the early game.
You can get an abundance of paper just by farming sugar cane, which you can easily find around rivers and other bodies of water. Leather can be gained by slaying cows around the world.
To make a book, arrange the ingredients like this in your inventory or crafting table.
This recipe is enough for a single book, but you can very easily make many more.
Finding Books in Minecraft
Books can be found as loot in a few structures around the world. The easiest places for you to find books are in villages and shipwrecks. You can find them in chests or sometimes in the form of bookshelves in villages.
There’s two other locations where you’re bound to find books as loot in chests, but these are much more dangerous and are not worth being ventured into just for the sake of a book.
You can also farm books from any bookshelves you find (in villages or libraries) by breaking them. As long as you don’t have the silk touch enchantment, a bookshelf will drop 3 books for you to pick up.
Using Books
There are 3 recipes in Minecraft that involve using a book.
The easiest one is making a book and quill, which allows you to write things down. This is a great way to write down coordinates or something for your friends.
You make it by combining a book with a feather and ink sac.
Then, there’s the 2 blocks you can craft: an enchanting table and bookshelves. Overall, enchanting is what you will be using your books for the most.
These items go hand in hand, because both are used for enchanting and to get better enchantments. Bookshelves can still be used as decorative blocks.
You will need the books to make enchantments later on when you start enchanting items.
Every book can be enchanted on the enchanting table and later used to stack enchantments on a single item or piece of gear on an anvil.
This is also how you will usually find enchantments in loot if they aren’t found on weapons.
Fishing is another way to get plenty of enchanting books.
What to do Next
Books are not the only thing paper is used for. Maps are another paper item that have vast utility in Minecraft that you use for navigating and exploring your world.
Though maps in their basic forms are very small, you can upgrade them in all sorts of ways by using a cartography table.
We have an article that shows you how to craft a cartography table and use it to make your maps better.
