Author Joe Simpson revealed that he has done away with Random House after they tried to "bully" him to agreeing to settle for 25% royalties.

Author Joe Simpson who recently released his bestselling novel, "Touching the Void" has revealed that he dumped his publisher Random House after failing to reach a mutual agreement. According to a report on The Guardian, Simpson said that they publishing house "thought they could bully me into accepting 25% royalties even though I owned 100% of them". After a "huge dispute" with his publisher Jonathan Cape, part of the Random House Group, over digital royalties, Simpson has decided to do away with them.

"It seems to be a fairly common tactic of the big publishing houses this, they like intimidating and bullying their authors, basically threatening to not publish them any more if they won't accept these ridiculous royalty rates," said Simpson in a YouTube video about his decision to part company with Random House.

"I realised when I had this battle with them that I didn't need them. We don't really need them as much as they would like us to think. OK, they have all the influence over book marketing and publicity, they have all the literary editors of the newspapers and magazines in their pockets, and they can ratchet that up, but they don't need to take 75% of your royalties to do that."

Simpson has now set up his own digital publishing house DirectAuthors.com and plans on using this channel to publish all his eBooks and well as printed books. Parliament Speakers, the publisher of Simpson's new digital publishing house is reportedly in talks with other authors to publish their books through them, offering them 40 to 50% royalties. Derek Redmond, the former Olympic athlete who is working on his debut novel and agreed to publish his book through them. "If there are any authors out there who are in a similar situation, look at your contracts, stand up for your rights, don't be bullied," said Simpson.

"It was prompted by Joe's situation with Random House. We were looking at possible solutions, and this came up as a good way forward," said Marek Kriwald, managing director of DirectAuthors.com. "There is a certain amount of debate in the industry about royalty rates. Some people are quite happy with whatever's offered, and others analyse the situation and decide it should be different ... You have to question [publishers holding on to] 75% - there's very little they need to do for that money."