How to make paper & books in Minecraft: Recipe, uses & crafting guide

Minecraft paper is one of the most useful resources you can make, especially if you want to make maps or books. Here’s how to craft paper as well as a book recipe for Minecraft to help enchant and log your adventures.

Due to the many uses of paper in Minecraft, players often worry about how hard it is to make, rather than trying to find the pre-made resource around their Minecraft seeds.

So, with that in mind, we’ve put together the recipe for both paper and books in Minecraft so you can try out those new 1.20 bookshelves, make your home look like a library, or prepare for some handy enchantments.

What is the recipe for paper in Minecraft?

Sugar cane is the only component material necessary to make paper, but the process of finding sugar cane has a bit of luck involved.

Sugar cane can spawn all over your Minecraft world, on blocks of dirt and sand next to water. This means that you will do a bit of exploring to find your first bits of sugar cane, but it shouldn’t be too hard to find as long as you’re near a river or ocean.

The recipe for paper.

You’ll need 3 sugar canes, arranged in the configuration above, which will yield 3 pieces of paper.

Can you get paper without sugar cane?

It is possible to get paper without having sugar cane and get paper without finding a single stalk of sugar cane.

On both Java and Bedrock, players will be able to find paper in chests in villages, shipwrecks, and in the library of a stronghold. Since these methods are much more difficult and require a good bit of exploration, crafting paper out of sugar cane is the better, more reliable method.

What can you use paper for?

Paper is an item that is the core material used for crafting a lot of important pieces within your Minecraft world, some of these include:

• Map and Blank Map
• Cartography Table
• Banner
• Book
• Book and Quill
• Locator Map
• Firework Rockets

The two that stand out among the rest are the Map and Book items, as these are vital for various reasons. The latter is used for creating Bookshelves, which is where players will be able to enchant their weapons they craft throughout their world, and enchanting is one of the best aspects of Minecraft!

How to make a Book in Minecraft

You’ll only need a few ingredients to make a Minecraft book.

Since books are one of the most important items players can make with paper, we’ve detailed the Minecraft book recipe so you can get back to making enchanted books, or just writing down all your travels and adventures.

To make a book in Minecraft, you’ll need:

• One Leather
• Three Paper

The game’s paper recipe is detailed above but to find Leather you will first need to find some cows. Once you have, you’ll, unfortunately, need to kill them. Upon their death, they will drop leather. Simply slot this and the paper you’ve made into a crafting table and the empty book will be yours.

That’s all you need to know about how to make paper and a handy book recipe for Minecraft. Be sure to take a look at some of our handy Minecraft guides and content:

How to make a grindstone in Minecraft | Best Minecraft servers | Best Minecraft seeds | Best Minecraft house ideas |  How to make a beehive in Minecraft | All Minecraft cheats and commands | How to make a grindstone in Minecraft | How to install the best Bedrock shaders in Minecraft | How to get Honeycomb in Minecraft | How to make Lanterns in Minecraft | How to breed horses in Minecraft & tame them | Minecraft teleporting guide | Minecraft Villager jobs guide | How to make paper in Minecraft | How to make a lead in Minecraft