Criminal Sentence 226: Lean on Me

The first sentence of an introduction to a book I finished:

"The writer would like to thank the many who leant their time, wisdom, and patience to the improvement of this book."

Obviously this sentence has not been improved enough! I find two ways to improve it:

1) Spell "lent" correctly!
2) Avoid the nominalization: "the improvement of." Why not just save words and say, "...patience to improve this book."