Jane Havell, who has died aged 65 of pancreatic cancer, was my business partner in the independent publishing house Maia Press.

We planned the launch of the company over a kitchen table with a large glass of wine in 2002 and over the next six years, before it was bought by Arcadia, we published fiction by writers including Sara Maitland and Michael Arditti and discovered new talent in others such as the crime writer Dreda Say Mitchell. One of the books we produced, Lewis de Soto’s A Blade of Grass in 2004, was longlisted for the Man Booker prize.

Apart from being my business partner Jane was also a friend. We enjoyed travelling together to publishing events, sharing a bedroom every year at Frankfurt book fair and managing to find time for fun and celebration as well as all the hard work involved in running a small publishing company on a tiny budget.

Jane was born in London, to George Havell, a civil servant, and his wife, Catherine (nee Curtin), a midwife. After Ursuline Convent school in Forest Gate, east London, she went to Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, to study English and then began work in publishing, becoming an editor at Virago and, during the early 1990s, fulfilling the same role at Time-Life Books.

Later she designed books for Yale University Press and Frances Lincoln, then art catalogues and artist monograms for Flammarion, Phaidon, the Vitra Museum, the Serpentine Gallery and many others. After the sale of Maia she continued with freelance book design work, mainly for Frances Lincoln and private clients.

Jane was a perfectionist and had a terrific flair for design; I once heard her described as “the best person to put text and pictures together in the whole of London”.

Diminutive in size but huge in character, she was the most loyal and committed friend anyone could wish for. I don’t think I can express her value better than one of her school reports, which described her as: “A person of integrity, intense and earnest in her approach to life … cheerful and entertaining as a companion and with a delightful sense of humour.”

She is survived by her brother, Nick.