Bookbreaking is the longstanding way of removing pages (particularly those containing maps or illustrations) from books, mainly from rare books. Bookbreaking is most often motivated by a market circumstances in which the maps or illustrations in a book will have more worth sold individually than the value of the intact book. Time and again this happens for the reason that book collectors judge minor defects in an old book so harshly as to make them seemingly un-saleable. This extensive practice almost certainly peaked in the 1970s or 1980s, since the value for old engravings and particularly for old maps was outstripping that of rare books. On the other hand in part because so many rare, demonstrated books were "broken" in this manner, the worth of the intact books has now risen the point where an old book is normally worth more intact. Book collectors have as well become more difficult in understanding minor condition problems.

The word bookbreaking is not generally used to refer to outright theft, where the bookbreaker does not possess the book in question. There have been numerous cases of robbery of illustrations, again, particularly maps from rare books in libraries.