The Best Essential Oil Books for Beginners
As much as I'd love to make it super easy for beginners by recommending just one essential oil book, I would be doing you a disservice by not offering you a selection of beginner books to consider.
However, I particularly like beginner books that provide a solid overview of essential oil safety and that offer detailed essential oil monographs (profiles) instead of offering only recipes and blends. General safety information should be covered in addition to safety pertaining to the individual essential oils discussed in the book.
Books that only provide essential oil blends or recipes are a quick-and-easy way to begin using essential oils. However, such books lack in very important information that can help you more effectively and safely develop a foundation that will help you grow beyond just creating recipes from a book.
For those that are new to working with essential oils, I tend to recommend the following three books the most often as they are reputable books written by very experienced aromatherapy educators who are objective and are not biased towards promoting a single brand of essential oils. These three books are also readily available and amongst the most affordable of essential oil books:
What to Look for When Shopping for Essential Oil Books for Beginners
There are quite a few more outstanding essential oil books for beginners available in addition to the three that I feature above. You will find additional books within the Introductory category of AromaWeb's Essential Oil Books area.
Unfortunately, there also are tons of really terrible books out there for sale on Amazon and elsewhere too.
Amazon and other book sources are flooded with essential oil books in both print and eBook (Kindle) formats. Anyone these days can pretty much publish a book. Despite the advantages this can offer to those wanting to see their work in print, this can impose greater challenges to those who are trying to decide what essential oil books are best for beginners. The Amazon rating system can be unreliable because book reviews can be left by friends of the author and by those that are brand new to using essential oils and that cannot yet tell the difference between reliable information and information that may be unsafe or ineffective.
Before buying any essential oil books, I recommend reading AromaWeb's guide entitled What to Look for When Shopping for Essential Oil Books. This guide will give you a lot of tips on what to look for and what to watch out for when selecting essential oil books for purchase.
Why Buy a Book About Essential Oils When There Are So Many Free Ways to "Learn" About Essential Oils Online?
As enticing as it can be to initially "learn" about essential oils via social media and Facebook groups, social media is flooded with an enormous amount of misinformation about essential oils. I frequently see individuals making concerning and unsafe claims. Some individuals may sound extremely authoritative and convincing despite promoting scary and inappropriate claims.
Eye catching info graphics can be gorgeous and provide immediate gratification with the quick-and-easy recipes, suggestions and tidbits of information they provide. However, many info graphics don't provide the full scope of the essential oil topic they cover or can be flat out inaccurate or misleading.
When you read essential oil books written by aromatherapy educators that have ample experience and insight, you receive a much better foundation and insight into the uses, safety and applications for essential oils.
Essential oils aren't cheap. Investing in the minor cost of one or more books will help ensure that you are using your precious essential oils safely and effectively.
