How to Make a Book in Minecraft and What Books Unlock
A book is 3 paper and 1 leather in any layout. How to make a book in Minecraft, where to get both, and what books unlock: bookshelves and enchanting.
Put 3 paper and 1 leather anywhere in your crafting grid and you get one book. It’s a shapeless recipe, so the layout doesn’t matter, and it fits in the 2×2 inventory grid as well as a crafting table. The layout above is just one way to arrange it.
Getting paper
Paper is 3 sugar cane in a row, which makes 3 paper. So one book costs 3 sugar cane.
Sugar cane grows on sand, dirt or grass right next to water. Riverbanks and beaches usually have some. Break the top two blocks and leave the bottom one so it regrows, and plant extra along your own water. Once you need lots of books, an automatic sugar cane farm takes care of it.
Getting leather
Leather drops from cows, mooshrooms, horses, donkeys, mules, llamas and hoglins, 0 to 2 at a time. Cows are the easiest by far, since you can breed them with wheat. A small pen with a few cows that you breed every so often gives you all the leather you’ll need, and a cow farm automates it.
Rabbit hide works too: 4 rabbit hide craft into 1 leather.
What books are for
- Bookshelves. 3 books and 6 planks per shelf. You need 15 of them around an enchanting table for the best enchantments, which means 45 books. How to make a bookshelf covers the placement.
- The enchanting table itself. 1 book, 2 diamonds and 4 obsidian. See how to make an enchanting table.
- Enchanted books. Put a plain book in the enchanting table to get an enchanted book, then apply it to gear on an anvil. How to use enchanted books explains anvil costs.
- Lecterns. Four wooden slabs and a bookshelf. A lectern is the librarian’s workstation, and it can hold a book for others to read.
- Book and quill. A book plus an ink sac and a feather. Use it to write notes, rules for a server, or a diary.
- Chiseled bookshelves. They hold up to six books, and a comparator can read which slot was used last, which makes them popular for hidden doors.
Trading
Librarians buy paper and sell enchanted books. That makes sugar cane the cheapest emerald source in the game: paper goes in, emeralds come out, and the emeralds go straight back to the librarian for Mending or Protection IV.
Common questions
Can you make a book without leather?
Not by crafting. The recipe always needs one leather. You can get books without crafting by breaking bookshelves, which drop three books each, or from village and stronghold library chests.
How do you make a book and quill?
Craft a book with an ink sac and a feather. The book and quill lets you write pages and sign it to make a written book.
How do you make an enchanted book?
Put a plain book in an enchanting table and pick an enchantment, the same way you would a sword. You can also buy enchanted books from librarian villagers or find them in chests.
Sources & verification
Facts on this page are checked against these references and in-game behavior for the stated edition(s). how we verify.
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