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Death is inevitable inThe Sims 4, unless of course, you have an occult Sim with an unnaturally long life. If your Sim is ordinary or unlucky though, they will eventually pass on, become a ghost, and eventually lose their connection to the physical world. Thankfully, there are ways to combat death after it’s already happened.
With the Book of Life, you can resurrect Sims that have already died. This is only possible if this book is written by another Sim who has completed the Bestselling Author aspiration though. In this guide, we are going to take a look at the complete process of making and using the Book of Life.
Updated July 09, 2025 by Jacqueline Zalace:In The Sims 4, the Book of Life is, well, a lifesaver. We’ve updated the formatting of this guide slightly and added a bit more information on leveling up the writing skill, allowing you to create this book as soon as possible in order to bring a Sim back to life.
How To Complete The Bestselling Author Aspiration
TheBestselling Author aspirationwill require your Sim toreach the maximum level of writing, as well as publish a certain amount of bestselling books and earn a specific amount of royalties.
Below, you can see each milestone of the Bestselling Author aspiration, as well as what you need to do for each.
1
Write for 1 Hour while Inspired
2
3
4
Achieve level 10 Writing skill
Complete 3 Bestsellers
Have Earned 25,000 Simoleons in Royalties Publishing Books
As a reward for the final milestone, you will get thePoetic trait,which is what allows you to write the Book of Life.
How To Increase Writing Skills
Overall, thebest advice we can give toincrease the writing skillis to write!Whether your Sim is practicing writing or writing books, the skill will increase.
You can also join the Writer career, which also requires you to increase your writing skill. In addition to this, you canearn promotion rewards that boost Inspiration and Focus,which can be helpful as you increase the writing skill.
Inspiration and Focus boost activities, including writing. This will include how fast you learn the skill while doing any writing-based activities.
Once you have completed this aspiration, you will be able to write the Book of Life.
How To Write The Book Of Life
The first step to writing this powerful book is tohead to a computer and select the “Write…” option.On the menu just before selecting the genre, you will see a new option, called"The Book of Life".
Select this, andyour Sim will start to write the Book of Life.This book is quite important, so it may take you a few sessions to complete it. Fortunately, the Book of Life has thesame writing process as other books;you can pause writing and come back at a later time.
How To Use The Book Of Life
Now that you have a Book of Life,you will need to bind another Sim to it.Interacting with the book will give you the option to"Capture Epic Saga".This will bind the chosen Sim and allow them to beresurrected once they die.
The subject of the epic sagamust be alive at the time the book is bound.You cannot bring back someone who died prior to this.
After death, your writer Sim can interact with the book once more andchoose the option to “Summon” the Sim, bringing their ghost to the lot.If the ghost of the Sim is already at the lot, you don’t have to do this; it’s just aneasy way to find the ghost.At this point, they are not yet resurrected.
To fully resurrect the Sim,they will need to read their own Book of Life.The easiest way to do so is toadd the ghost Sim to your household(either by increasing your friendship or by using cheats). With the Sim in your household,simply place the Book of Life down and have the ghost read it.
Once this happens, they will be resurrected!The book cannot be used again,so you will need to write more if you want another.
If the deceased Sim’s spirit has passed on to the Netherworld,they cannot be resurrected.Thankfully, this doesn’t happen randomly, as youmanually do this from a gravestone/urn.
How Many Books Of Life Can A Sim Write?
Sims who have completed the Bestselling Author aspiration canwrite as many Books of Life as they want!There are only a few limitations to keep in mind.
Firstly, your writer Simcannot write the Book of Life for themselves.Additionally,only the author of the book can use it to capture an epic saga.If, for some reason, your writer Sim is gone before binding the book, then it’s essentially useless.
Other than that, you can have your writer Sim make dozens of these books. One possible option is to write several books without binding them to another Sim. When you meet worthy Sims, you can take one of these books and bind it to their soul.
The Sims 4
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Developed by Maxis, The Sims 4 is a life simulation game in the vein of its predecessors. It launched in 2014, becoming one of the biggest-selling PC games of that year. In 2022, the base game became free-to-play, while paid DLC continues to be released on a regular basis.
