Egyptian law does not stipulate a review of book content as a condition for publication; yet writers and publishers recount being asked for approvals from the Operations Authority, Morale Affairs and the Survey Authority before a deposit number is granted, and refusals of deposit numbers with phrases such as “the approval has not come” and “the book is rejected”, without knowing the body involved or the reasons; meanwhile Dar al-Kutub denies examining content, and the head of the Publishers Association denies receiving complaints.<\/p>\n
\nOn 26 July, the writer and man of letters Sherif El-Asfoury went to the General Authority for the National Library and Archives (Dar al-Kutub) to obtain a deposit number for his new book, “The Flood of Fools”, which deals with the military operations in Iran, and was shocked when an employee informed him that he needed to obtain the approval of the Operations Authority of the Egyptian Armed Forces, the body<\/a> responsible for strategic planning, the management of land, naval and air combat operations, and the drawing up of military plans.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
When he expressed his surprise, he was told that the authors of some books must obtain the approvals of various bodies before being granted a deposit number, depending on the nature of the content, under ministerial instructions: books dealing with the armed forces, the police or military leaders are referred to the Department of Morale Affairs, those dealing with military operations to the Operations Authority, and maps to the Survey Authority, while dealing with religious affairs requires the approval of Al-Azhar or the Church, depending on the religion concerned; this, according to what he was told, came after the employees signed undertakings that make them personally responsible.<\/p>\n
El-Asfoury tells Zawia3: “I had included six maps in the book, but they are not geographical maps; rather, they are charts relating to the foreign trade of certain countries, which are also called maps. However, they insisted on examining them and referred me first to the Survey Authority, and there the official in charge of technical affairs was a former officer who did not like my manner, so he began to drag out the procedures.” He adds: “The deposit number law was put in place to protect the author’s rights, not to protect the state, and the fee for obtaining the number does not exceed EGP 20, which shows that it is a simple administrative procedure; it is enough for the author to present his ID card, the name of the book and a summary of it, and then he obtains the number directly, but they have turned this administrative procedure into a means of censorship.”<\/p>\n
\nHe recounts that until 2023 an author would go with his ID card and the name of the book and obtain the number on the spot, but after that the employees began telling publishers and writers that the authors’ names had to undergo a security review in case they were on terrorism lists, so obtaining the number came to take from two days to several days until the author’s details were reviewed; he notes that obtaining it is easier for authors than for publishers, who are asked for a commercial register, a tax card, membership of the Publishers Association and other documents. He continues: “I submitted two books to the authority; the first, a novel, obtained its deposit number after three days, while the second was a political book that included maps, so they referred me first to the Survey Authority, then to the Morale Affairs Department of the armed forces; this takes us back to old stages of censorship.” His political book remained suspended between these referrals without a decision being taken on it.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Legal deposit<\/a> is a legislative procedure that obliges authors and publishers to deposit a specified number of copies in the national library in order to preserve intellectual output, while the International Standard Book Number<\/a> (ISBN) is a unique numerical identifier for a book that facilitates circulation and cataloguing. The legal deposit of books rests on Law<\/a> No. 20 of 1936 on Publications, Copyright Protection Law<\/a> No. 38 of 1992 amending certain provisions of Law No. 354 of 1954, and the Intellectual Property Rights Protection Law<\/a> No. 82 of 2002.<\/p>\n
El-Asfoury points out that publishers have become more cautious in dealing with books of a political nature for fear that their obtaining deposit numbers will be obstructed or delayed, and that most publishing houses avoid public objection for fear of measures that would affect their activity, especially since a large part of their income depends on taking part in book fairs abroad. He believes that some houses face restrictions on exporting books or taking part in international fairs, which have included refusal to grant deposit numbers and manifestations of obstruction and censorship, and some of them being barred from exporting by unannounced decisions whose source is unknown, even though about 60% of publishers’ income comes from fairs abroad; he notes that books returning from those fairs may be referred to the Censorship Authority for Artistic Works, and an entire shipment may be rejected because of a single book, even though it was printed in Egypt. He points out that the cultural community deals cautiously with these issues, and that many publishers and writers prefer not to speak about them publicly for fear of similar repercussions, criticising the absence of public positions from some cultural bodies on incidents of banning, confiscation or restriction.<\/p>\n
Decision<\/a> No. 363 of 2017 regulating legal deposit obliges publishing houses and publishers to obtain deposit numbers for all publications and intellectual works subject to the Intellectual Property Protection Law, and to deposit a specified number of paper and electronic copies. The announced official procedures<\/a> for obtaining the number are limited to submitting the cover details, the name of the author, the publisher and the printer, a copy of the author’s ID card or a declaration of responsibility, a summary or table of contents of the book and the publishing house’s stamp, and the law does not provide for a review of the book’s content or for obtaining the approval of the Censorship Authority for Artistic Works; after obtaining the number, the publisher is obliged to deposit five printed copies and one electronic copy within three months, and the penalty for failure to deposit is limited to a fine, with no custodial penalties.<\/p>\n
Recommended reading: Confiscation and Bans: How Is Egypt’s Publishing Sector Suffering from Restrictions?<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n
\nSensitive Titles and Political Connotations<\/h1>\n
Although obtaining a deposit number is an administrative procedure to document and preserve intellectual output, not a licence for the content of a book, a number of publishers and writers have in recent years raised complaints<\/a> that in some cases it has turned into a means of obstructing the publication of books that deal with political subjects or are classified as sensitive.<\/p>\n
In 2017, the late publisher Mohamed Hashem, director of Merit Publishing House, complained<\/a> that Dar al-Kutub had asked him for the approval of the Censorship Authority for Artistic Works before issuing a deposit number for the book “The Stake: The Military and the Brotherhood between Alliance and Confrontation”, while Dar al-Kutub denied the existence of this condition and described the incident as an individual initiative by an employee; but the same thing recurred with publishers and writers who wanted to reprint old books or poetry collections whose titles were considered to have political connotations. In February 2021, the poet Maher Mehran announced<\/a> that Dar al-Kutub had refused to grant a deposit number for his collection “And I Am in the Cage” on the grounds that the title and the cover, drawn by the artist Samir Abdel Ghany, “contain politics”, accusing Dar al-Kutub of having turned into an inquisition court.<\/p>\n
In January 2023, the novelist Ahmed Abdel Halim announced<\/a> that the General Egyptian Book Organisation had blocked the issuing of a deposit number for a book for unknown reasons, and that for this reason it would not be printed in Egypt. In November of the same year, the literary critic Sabry Mamdouh revealed<\/a> that Dar al-Kutub had refused to issue a deposit number for the book “A Summary and Critical Edition of the Sira of Ibn Hisham” by the writer Ashraf El-Khamaisy, which was due to be published by “Al-Muharrir Publishing”; adding that the author thought that the subject of editing and summarising heritage texts had some problem with the authorities, so the publisher requested a deposit number for a new novel by the same writer, and it was refused too.<\/p>\n
The writer and publisher Somaya Abdel Moneim, director of Aflak House for Printing, Publishing and Distribution, affirms that the deposit numbers department at Dar al-Kutub has overstepped the role entrusted to it, since its original competence is limited to granting numbers as an administrative procedure, not exercising any form of censorship over the titles of books or their contents. She recounts a personal experience: her short-story collection “Empty Bed” obtained a deposit number in 2022, having earlier won the Writers’ Union Prize, but when in 2024 she tried to obtain a new deposit number for it under the name of the publishing house she had founded, she was surprised to find the request rejected on the grounds that the title carries “sexual connotations”, even though the work contains nothing of the kind, and the request is still pending to this day.<\/p>\n
She tells Zawia3: “Some requests for deposit numbers are rejected without specific reasons being given, and at other times the publisher is merely informed that the refusal came ‘from security’, without any official decision or report explaining the reasons or allowing the applicant to know its justification; this approach lacks transparency and does not rest on clear procedures.” She explains that a review of content, if the nature of the book calls for it, must take place through the bodies legally competent to do so and not through the deposit numbers department, and that requiring approvals on specific subjects might be understandable if the law provided for it, but the problem lies in the department intervening to assess titles or reject them without any legal basis.<\/p>\n
\nShe points out that the time taken to obtain the number has come to stretch to three days or a week, after it used to be a matter of minutes, which harms publishers, especially in the season of preparation for the Cairo International Book Fair, when the department restricts the number of numbers that can be obtained each week. She refers to the imposition of fees of EGP 20 for an Egyptian author and EGP 50 for an Arab or foreign one, questioning their justification since obtaining the number used to be free of charge, and notes that promises to convert the service to an electronic system have not solved the problem, as publishers, especially those coming from the governorates, still have to travel to collect the numbers and may be surprised to find they have not been issued despite completing the procedures.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
On the nature of the books held up, she points out that the department does not in fact have a full copy of the work at the time of submission, but only a picture of the cover, a summary of no more than a hundred words and some details, and therefore any objection is mostly based on the title or the first impression, not on an actual reading of the content. On the security vetting of authors’ names, she explains that Dar al-Kutub does not run a check on all authors, but if one of their names is already listed with the competent authorities, they notify the department and the issuing of the number is blocked, stressing that comprehensive vetting is not within Dar al-Kutub’s competence. She considers that many of these crises stem from employees’ own initiatives rather than from announced decisions, as publishers are told that the procedure is “a decision” without seeing its text. She cites requests that she described as unjustified, such as previously obliging publishers to submit books in “Word” format instead of “PDF”, or to attach the original cover on the compact disc, or to write down the author’s phone number even though the procedural relationship is between Dar al-Kutub and the publisher; and she stresses that the sector needs a clear framework that defines the department’s competences and prevents it from overstepping its administrative role.<\/p>\n
The former Minister of Culture, Dr Gihane Zaki, had issued on 12 May her Decision<\/a> No. 198 of 2026 regulating deposit procedures, obliging publishers and authors to submit a searchable digital copy in PDF format or a Word copy, in addition to the printed copies, in order to obtain deposit numbers; the decision sparked wide controversy in cultural circles, and the Publishers Association objected<\/a> to it on the grounds that it opens the door to prior censorship of content and raises concerns relating to the protection of intellectual property and the possibility of works being pirated, which prompted the authority to amend its procedures.<\/p>\n
Recommended reading: Cairo Book Fair: Rents Rise by Up to 250% and Publishers Threaten to Withdraw<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n
“The Approval Has Not Come” or “The Book Is Rejected”<\/h1>\n
In recent years, the procedures for obtaining a deposit number have been increasingly tightened; whereas they used to be limited to the title of the book and a copy of the author’s ID card, with several numbers granted on the same day, about two years ago the authority began asking for the outer and inner covers, then the table of contents and the introduction, and sometimes a full copy of the book, along with additional documents such as an undertaking proving that the pen name belongs to the holder of the ID card if the two names differ, according to the publisher Gamal Abdel Rahim, director of Al-Maktaba Al-Arabiya Publishing. He explains that the number of numbers granted to a publisher has shrunk from ten at a time to five, and sometimes to three in the busy seasons before the fair, and that the time needed to obtain them has stretched from one day to no less than 48 hours, and may extend to a week or ten days on the pretext of waiting for “the approval”, without the body or the reasons being made clear.<\/p>\n
He tells Zawia3: “Some deposit requests are rejected or delayed without reasons being given; the publisher is only notified with the phrase ‘the approval has not come’ or ‘the book is rejected’, without knowing the body that took the decision or its justification, which puts him in direct confrontation with the author and causes financial losses after bearing the costs of proofreading, design and printing.” He explains that some books are referred to security bodies for review before the number is granted, according to what he has been told repeatedly, and that some works were rejected after these reviews without an official explanation or an opportunity to amend the content. He also recounts the withdrawal of a book from the 2025 Cairo International Book Fair even though it had previously obtained a deposit number and an ISBN, considering that the problem extends to publishers’ participation in fairs without reasons being given, which wastes months of preparation, inflicts losses on the publisher and damages his reputation with authors. He calls for the digitisation of the procedures for obtaining numbers so that they are completed electronically, for the reasons for refusal or delay to be announced, and for direct channels of communication to be made available between publishers and the bodies concerned.<\/p>\n
Yehia Fikry, director of Al-Maraya Publishing House, points out that the house has faced delays in obtaining numbers in several cases without being officially informed of the reasons for the refusal or delay, and that what usually happens is that it is asked to send a copy of the book for review without being told which body is reviewing it or on what basis. Although the house has not so far received official requests for approvals from specific bodies such as the Survey Authority or Morale Affairs, he affirms that what is asked of it is to send the book and then be told later that the reply has not yet arrived, which suggests, in his assessment, the existence of a body that reviews some publications before granting them the number. He tells Zawia3: “Al-Maraya was subjected during 2025 to two cases of this kind, preceded by a similar case in 2024, but the matter is not formulated as an official refusal of the deposit number; rather, it takes the form of suspending the request pending a review of the book, with the publisher continuing to be told that the reply has not yet arrived.” He notes that the delays have not been limited to political books, and that at times he could not identify a clear reason why some publications were held up; that the usual period ranges between three and four days, and that exceeding it is often an indication of an additional review linked to the content of the work rather than to the publishing house, although he has not tested submitting the same work through another publisher to verify this. Al-Maraya for Culture and Arts had previously been barred<\/a> from taking part in the Cairo International Book Fair in 2025.<\/p>\n