Learn How to Make a Book and Quill in Minecraft – Step-by-Step Guide

Curious about the world of Minecraft and how to create a Book and Quill within the game? This article will guide you through the process step by step, from gathering the necessary materials to crafting the final product.

Discover the different uses for a Book and Quill in Minecraft, such as writing books, creating maps, and keeping track of notes. Plus, learn some handy tips for enhancing your experience with this versatile tool. Let’s dive in!

What is Minecraft?

Minecraft is a video game developed and published by Mojang Studios that allows players to build, explore, and survive in an open-world sandbox environment. Originally created by developer Markus “Notch” Persson, the game was released in 2011 and has grown in popularity and sophistication ever since. It is available on all major gaming platforms including PC, console, and mobile and as of July 2021 had sold over 200 million copies worldwide.

Players can play in either a survival, creative, adventure, spectator or hardcore game mode with each mode offering unique challenges and opportunities. Along with writing books and quills, players can also mine, farm crops, breed animals, and trade. The game is largely community-driven with regular updates influenced by player feedback and numerous user-contributed modifications (mod) and expansions available. Minecraft is also used in education, including a version known as Minecraft: Education Edition designed for the classroom and as architectural and urban planning tools as well.

What is a Book and Quill in Minecraft?

A Book and Quill in Minecraft is an item that functions as a book, allowing users to store writing on pages within the item itself. While other types of books in the game provide enchantments or material storage, the book and quill does nothing other than store writing. It can store text on up to 50 pages and can be shared with other players on multiplayer servers. Different colors of ink can be used to add color to the quill and can be named to organize a player’s collection of texts.

The Book and Quill in Minecraft Trading earns no points and is not a tradeable, troll, or economic item. This item requires ink to add text to the pages, a functional equivalent of a writing device. Minecraft Books can be multiple blocks tall and can accommodate 100 pages, while the book and quill is limited to a size of only one block and no more than 50 pages of text.

What Materials Do You Need to Make a Book and Quill in Minecraft?

You need one piece of leather and three books to make a book and the number of books can be modified in Minecraft recipes. To make paper, you need three sugarcane. To make s paper at a crafting table, place one sugar cane in each cell and you will have a piece of paper. The recipe to make an item frame with three leather and sticks or rabbit leather and sticks. Items are used as storage systems or as decorations. You can craft an item frame with any type of wood.

Leather

Leather is an item that can be collected by killing cows and calcifying them in Minecraft. Beef can be eaten for moderate hunger restoration, and when combined with iron, rings, or other precious resources, or other building blocks, it can be a dietary supplement or source of fuel which heals 1 unit of hunger points every 35 seconds for 5 minutes.

Some livestock farming is beneficial because the Minecraft economy relies heavily on hosting and trading. For books, scouting separate cow farms may be necessary since the minimal number of cows surrounding a player’s home will more than likely not provide enough leather quickly enough. Remember that one piece of leather is required for one book.

Paper

Paper is the second and mandatory crafting component for a Book and Quill in Minecraft. Paper is crafted with three sugarcane per sheet, which is acquired via finding it naturally spawned in your world’s generator. It can be broken to receive sugarcane items which can be crafted into paper as depicted below. 3 sugar canes in the first row, column, or diagonal of the crafting grid will result in paper in the box located in the second row, second column of the crafting grid.

Conversely, paper sheets will rarely be dropped by the individual sugar canes affected by the most recent crop growth that you or a farmer have applied bone meal to. However, while most vegetation can be bone-milled, sugar cane does not receive the same bonus chance of dropping extra items in the process when fully-grown. Paper possesses no properties beyond its sole purpose in a book and quill, unlike the ink or feather components of books and quills.

Ink Sac

An Ink Sac item in Minecraft is a dye that is used for various things such as coloring leather armor, sign writing, and more importantly to create a book and quill. Ink Sacks are a Common item that can be found by killing Squids in bodies of water. Squids spawn in Water blocks at altitudes ranging from 46 to 62, inclusive, which must be in a light level of 3 or higher eyes level.

When you are fighting against the squid to get an ink sac, the Smart fight strategy is to jump into the water and fight the Squids in the water instead of land, as this makes it much easier. Ink Sacs cannot be made or found as loot in containers. They are also used in creating Green dye (combined with Cactus Green), and are a component in the creation of Firework Star, Balloons, and Banner designs.

How to Make a Book and Quill in Minecraft?

You must have 3 leather, 3 paper, and 1 ink sac in your inventory. Begin by learning how to create a book. Open the crafting table interface. Arrange the 3 leather and 9 pieces of paper in the 3×3 crafting grid to create the book. Once the book has been created, simply add the 1 ink sac to the book in the crafting grid to create the book and quill item. Drag it to your inventory to use it as you please.

The leather can be obtained by killing adult cows and horses to get 0-2 leather items. The paper can be obtained by processing sugar cane. Plant sugar cane to grow it to the third stage. Once it has reached the third stage, break the top and middle block of the sugar cane. The paper will automatically drop to the ground and can be collected for use. Ink is a common drop obtained from killing squid items. When a squid is killed, it will drop between 1-3 ink sacs, which can be collected and used in crafting in later stages.

The book and quill is an item in the creative mode of Minecraft which allows the players to make annotations or short books about survival strategies, crafting recipes, world structure mapping, or for story-telling. The book and quill will be saved in the rightmost column of the player’s inventory. When the player interacts with it they can write in it and it will be saved in a finished form. This can be achieved by selecting the book and quill in the rightmost column of the inventory and then looking to the left to see the Finished option.

Step 1: Gather Materials

To make a book and quill in Minecraft, you need to do some mining and collect three types of materials. Prepare to mine trees for 3 wooden planks. You will need to mine 3 blocks of leather from cows at level Y of 0-63 to receive this loot. Mine 3 blocks of sugar cane, which as of the Nether update on June 23, 2020 can be found throughout the world of Minecraft. There is no specific height level to look for – simply keep an eye out as you explore the world and you are bound to find it. If sugar cane is not yet in your world, you can begin to spread it by creating a waterway and planting a block of sugar cane on a grass block near the water. The sugar cane will grow up to three blocks tall and can be easily harvested with no tools.

Step 2: Craft a Book

To make a book and quill in Minecraft, you need to first make a book. You need leather and sugarcane to make a book and go fishing to get ink sacs.

Leather can be got from killing cows or various other minecraft mobs. There are currently 10 different types of fish, making it easy to find a source of ink sacs or to make a fishing rod with that particular fish. Sugarcane can be found along the edge of water in many biomes and grows fast.

Step 3: Craft an Ink Sac

For create a Book and Quill in Minecraft, you require Ink Sacs which are obtained from killing Squids. After squids die, they will drop Ink Sacs. Keep in mind that the drop rate isn’t one hundred percent. You’ll want to spend some time hunting tons of squids in order to guarantee that you will get enough from killing. Normally, you should get enough Ink Sacs from just killing a few.

Step 4: Combine the Book and Ink Sac

Assuming you have completed the previous steps successfully, you should have both a Book and an Ink Sac in your crafting grid. Click-and-drag the Book item from your crafting grid by selecting it and holding down the click button. Move it toward the Ink Sac so they both switch spots and then pick up the combined Book and Ink Sac from the crafting grid.

What Can You Use a Book and Quill for in Minecraft?

A Book and Quill can be used for a multitude of purposes in Minecraft including the following which all players should think about utilizing it for.

• Diaries and Journals: Keeping chatter that all members of your realm are not intended to see out of your chat feed.
• Reminders and Waypoint Logs: To remember essential coordinates.
• Meeting Minutes: Coordinate tasks to complete as a team with shared books.
• Recipes and Invention Records: To keep explanatory notes for your complicated inventions and crafting items.
• Stories and Lore Creation: Record the favorite past adventures put on by realm members.
• Realm and player rule creation and enforcement: Book record deeds, items, or contracts agreed upon within a realm.
• Pets and Mobs Logs: Share stories about your pet or mob, keep current status, notices, or coordinate playing sessions with them.
• Communications: The book a quick note as a good form of non-verbal communications.

Writing and Editing Books

Players cannot directly write in books outside of the chat system. Before a player can write in a book, they must first open it by right-clicking it. They can then write the desired text in the book’s GUI.

Once a player is finished writing the desired text for the book, players can finalize the writing process by either pressing the “sign and close” button in the book GUI or manually signing and closing the book. Players sign and close a book by modifying their username in the book GUI settings. As a book is written, the book can be edited at any time by reopening the book and making the desired changes in the book’s GUI.

Minecraft books have been used by players to create guides of their worlds, write stories, create instruction manuals of various game elements or mods, create presentations, create guestbooks on multiplayer servers, and much more.

Creating Maps

After a compass is used to create an empty map in Minecraft, a player can continue its cartographic journey to expand the map. Crafting a compass collects a book and quill and some iron ingots are required. The F symbol in the top right of the map indicates your orientation. North is always at the top while East, South, and West are always to the right, bottom, and left, respectively.

A player can zoom a map into 4 additional levels, totaling a maximum of 9 levels, by creating a new item with an existing map in hand. To zoom a map, perform the following steps:

Level 2: Paper

• Book and quill
• Obtain an empty map.
• Right-click the empty map. Now you have a copy of the map.

Level 3: Paper x1 Map

• Book and quill
• Empty map
• Right-click the empty map while holding paper. Now you have a level 3 map!

Level 4: Paper x4 Map

• Book and quill
• Empty map
• Right-click the empty map while holding 4 paper. Now you have a level 4 map!

An additional 5 levels of maps are obtained by surrounding the map with 8 pieces of paper (maps of the same zoom-level) or adding a compass (maps of different zoom-levels).

Further details about maps in Minecraft can be accessed in the Crafting Region Maps guide by Nova Skin.

Keeping Track of Notes and Recipes

Using a book and quill to keep track of notes and recipes is useful both for brainstorming new ideas as well as making the conservation of these ideas long-term. It helps you remember actions you need to take, and the tasks you have completed. The following details and recipes can be written using a book and quill to remember for reference and future use (assuming no mods):

• Coordinates for locations
• Recipes for items you intend to reproduce
• Useful locations such as Mine entrances, bases, or towns
• Way-points you intend to remove later

Tips for Using a Book and Quill in Minecraft

Books and quills cannot be stacked or combined. If you want to keep the same book with several chapters together, place them into the same lectern or bookshelf, or combine it with a book enchanted with mending. You can always create an additional book and quill if your first one gets filled up with text.

With a book and quill on your hotbar, you can quickly create a record of important data points or co-ordinates that you can refer back to if you mark them in your Minecraft world. For example, in the underwater tunnel displayed in the third image below, one could easily forget which way leads back to their main facility if they do not commit it to paper.

As they do in the real world, books and quills wear out according to the number of pages on which you write. Conversely, they can heal as you keep writing with them. If you fill out all forty pages in a book you cannot write on it anymore, unlike a book and quill partially filled out which may still receive additional writing and drawing. It is quite difficult to write directly on paper, so always use a book and quill to be able to write letters and create symbols in a visually successful form.

Use Different Colors of Ink

There are many types of ink, ranging from inks and dyes that are made chemically like Blue #1 dye to others that are botanically produced such as henna. They have a wide variety of colors, but in Minecraft, there are only two inks obtained from two colors of dye that are used in pens – Black Ink that is made from black dye and Red Ink that is made from red dye which is obtained from roses, poppies, or beetroots.

It may be the case that in the future of Minecraft, additional colors and ink sources for those colors may be introduced which indeed would open up more possibilities.

Save Your Book and Quill in a Chest

Saving your book is done next. To do this, open your inventory back up. Next, click the drop item icon on the book and quill in the right part of your screen, or use the regular right-click “throw” action with your selection on an empty square. You will now see the text window with your book and quill. Once you have it centered in front of you, right-click to save the book. It will then appear in the hotbar section of the screen for you to toss or do with as you please as normal. The book will automatically adopt the next free volume number (V2, V3, etc.) if there is an existing entry in your inventory. A book and quill can be picked up and put in the inventory without the need to save it as it is automatically stored.

To make a copy of the stored book and quill, place your mouse pointer over it, click with the right mouse button, then holding down the shift key and click the desired location. To edit a stored book and quill, do the same as outlined in this guide for existing books. Book and Quills can be saved in Bookshelves or dummy items such as Armor Stands or in a Chest. When stored properly, they can be copied infinitely. As of the update 1.14 (Village and Pillage), they have a max stacking number of 16.

Use Quills for More Detailed Writing

In the Minecraft game, a book and quill can be used for more detailed and complex writing. Books and quills include a 128-character limit and have no character immediately after the maximum limit on a single page.

This activates a feature such that you can open the chat box at the bottom, type a `/` and then you can insert product links, navigate to webpages, and issue other commands (albeit an advanced feature).

The only way to use the book and quill object in Minecraft is to write in it. You cannot insert prewritten text or copy-paste text from outside sources.

This does restrict you from using the book as an in-game catalog for crafted items or other related uses. However, while no outside copy-paste option exists, you or others can still spend some time to copy and type information into the book.

Frequently Asked Questions

Question: How do I make a Book and Quill in Minecraft?
To make a Book and Quill in Minecraft, you will need three items: a book, an ink sac, and a feather.

Question: Where can I find these items?
You can find books in villages, strongholds, and libraries in Minecraft. Ink sacs can be obtained by killing squids in water. Feathers can be collected by killing chickens.

Question: How do I combine these items?
Once you have all three items, place them in the crafting table in the following pattern: book in the middle square, ink sac in the top left square, and feather in the bottom left square.

Question: Can I customize the cover of my book and quill?
Yes, you can change the cover of your book and quill by placing it in an anvil and combining it with a banner or a dye.

Question: How many pages can I write in a Book and Quill?
A Book and Quill in Minecraft can hold up to 50 pages, with 256 characters per page.

Question: Can I share my Book and Quill with other players?
Yes, you can share your Book and Quill with other players by dropping it on the ground for them to pick up or by placing it in a chest for them to access.