…why “Books Are the Hot Medium,” specifically referring to the current deluge of White House insider scandal tales.

One answer: With modern production technology, a hardcover tome can be rushed to the stores as quickly as a monthly magazine.

Another: Interviews with authors (and with govt. officials on the receiving end of authors’ accusations) can cheaply fill some of the unlimited time the cable news channels have to fill.

A third reason, which the NYT story doesn’t give: As we head into the dawn of a long-attention-span generation, books simply seem to be more worthy of one’s time. Classic “short-form” TV programming keeps losing viewers, while feature films on DVD have become the US consumer market’s most successful new product. Even video games have evolved from pinball-length short entertainments into 45-hour-long epics of level after level. When today’s children-not-left-behind graduate into adolescence and adulthood from years of relentless studying for standardized tests, a long, hefty read will seem even more like a natural way to relax at the end of the working day.

I’m not completely thrilled by all this. For nearly two decades, my local professional reputation has been that of a writer specializing in short, sharp shocks. With the ascencion of Jean Godden from the Seattle Times to the Seattle City Council, my li’l monthly half-page in the Belltown Messenger is the only three-dot column left in local print media.

So I’m moving into books. They’ve got higher profit margins and longer shelf lives than periodicals. (A fourth reason why books are “hot.”)

It’s a whole different type of work, requiring stronger legs and a sturdier torso. You can’t just stretch a short topic to feature length, no more than you can enlarge a spindly-legged spider to movie-monster size. But it’s where the flow is going, and all the self-help books say I gotta go with the darned flow.