The Scottish publisher who beat his giant rivals by spotting the talent of this year's Booker Prize winner has accused the London-dominated trade of being parochial and uninterested in events outside the M25.

Jamie Byng, whose Edinburgh-based Canongate Books has become Europe's most talked-about publishing house after Yann Martel won the Booker for Life of Pi, has condemned the capital for showing the same narrow focus and self-obsession it so often says it detects in much smaller places.

London's size and diversity often led to a parochialism among some publishers which were more interested in what was going on within the dreaded ringroad around the city than beyond it, Byng told The Observer. And he dismissed speculation, which increased after the Canadian Martel's victory last week, that he and Canongate will move to London.

'There is a general assumption among those based in London that when you reach a certain level of success you have to go there. While it is a city I love, it is more beneficial for us to be in Edinburgh,' he said.

'From Edinburgh we have looked abroad because we have had to. We are forced to have broad horizons. It's an asset not being in London.'

Canongate's list of books was more cosmopolitan than those of most of the large London houses, Byng added. 'Around 50 per cent of our list is in translation, and few companies based in London can match that.'

The charismatic 33-year-old, who rescued the firm from receivership in 1994, said the Booker win had reaffirmed his opinion that Canongate would do best by staying in Edinburgh, where it employs just 15 people.

Seen as something of a maverick in a world of smart offices and sharp suits, James Edmund Byng, youngest son of the Earl of Stafford, still goes to work on the Royal Mile in trainers, jeans and crumpled shirts while puffing on a cigarette. His approach has engendered a strong team spirit, say his staff.

Within five years he had embraced an imprint that campaigned in favour of legalising cannabis. 'It's a publisher's duty to publish books that question the status quo,' he said then.

A decade on, Canongate was heading for an annual turnover of more than £3 million. That was before the Booker win, which in itself could be worth another £2m.

The small band of literary rebels are now renowned around the globe and, as well as poaching Martel from the London firm Faber and Faber, have in the past year published Robert Sabbag's Smokescreen, Will Ferguson's Happiness and The Crimson Petal and The White, by Michel Faber, which rocketed into the New York Times bestseller list.

There will be no resting on these laurels. 'The most ambitious, serious publishing event we've been involved in,' is how Byng - who was named one of the most powerful men in Britain by GQ magazine - describes a project in which contemporary writers are being invited to take a myth of their choice and retell it in 25,000 words. Among those already signed up or interested are Jeanette Winterson, Donna Tartt, Margaret Atwood, Philip Pullman, and Chinua Achebe.

Alongside professional success, though, has come personal pain. Earlier this year - the most successful in the company's history - Byng and his wife Whitney, who he met 12 years ago, separated. She moved to London with their children, Marley and Leo. They are spending this weekend with their father, and Canongate, in Scotland.