One of the many things I love about my work as a ghostwriter is the astonishing cachet that books still have, despite all the predictions of the medium’s demise. Books may ultimately go the way of hand-sewn shirts, but it hasn’t happened yet—not if my clients are anything to go by.

I worked with a tough, upstanding businessman who was born into poverty and made a fortune in retail. He had three large homes hung with original paintings by artists even I could recognize, four happily married kids, and 12 grandchildren. Yet he still had unfinished business. He had gone to work at age 14 to help his mother put food on the table, and he wanted his great-grandchildren to know it. He wanted a book. Not even a published book—he didn’t need the attention—but a private memoir, clothbound, with a dust jacket. When it came to passing on his story to future generations, a book seemed (still!) the best tool for the job.

Books touch lives in extraordinary ways. One client had protested what he knew to be unethical corporate behavior in a gigantic and soon-to-be-notorious financial company. They didn’t fire him, exactly; they kicked him out of the v-p’s corner office and put him in an isolated cubicle with a phone that never rang, over an alleyway full of garbage. Although he emerged with a handsome settlement, he suffered months of serious depression, spending hours a day lying on the couch. Finally he decided to share his story.

Over the next year, I witnessed the man catch fire. He got his book printed and took it to business schools, helping students think about the day when they might face the same choice he had as they move up the corporate ladder: keep your mouth shut—and keep your job—or do the right thing. He didn’t need a doctorate to speak at the universities, he had written a book. That ticket turned his life around. He had a purpose, he had a message, and he knew how he wanted to use it.

We admire the Web for its fluidity, but we treasure a book for its permanence. I once received a call from the daughter of a woman who had just passed away. Would I speak at her mother’s memorial service? I was honored, of course. But why me? The daughter explained: a year or two after my work on her mother was published, her mother suffered a series of strokes. Unable to speak or to comprehend others, she spent her final days sitting silently in her chair, hugging our book in her lap.

Even institutions renowned for their technical wizardry have reasons to write books. An oral history commissioned by the mathematics department at MIT earned a donation that paid for the project we did 10 times over. It turns out that wealthy alumni, unmoved by the standard supplications of university development mailings, will take the time to dip into a book. Give them a story they want to be part of, and they will write out a check. Sure, a briefer presentation on the Web will inspire a few clicks—but tell your story well, set it nicely in type, bind it in cloth, and you have a very potent development tool in your hands.

Many companies, too, have stories to tell, and a few are savvy enough to realize the value of a full-length book treatment in cultivating company culture. Bill Novak, the prominent ghostwriter, was used to capturing the lives of individuals—Lee Iacocca, Magic Johnson, Tim Russert et al—when he suggested to the founder of a large and complex media company that he combine his private memoir with a personal history of his firm. The company was so delighted with the result that it printed 100,000 copies, most of them for its employees.

Why does our society still value books so highly? Why do we love and respect them so? We know why. Tweets and Vines have their place, but a book is a slower and deeper thing. Every book is an invitation to spend meaningful time alone with the person behind it—a storyteller you love, a mind you admire, a member of your family. Once you pick up that book, you have that person’s full attention, for as long as you choose to spend in his or her company. In our distracted world, that’s worth a great deal.

Joel Segel is a ghostwriter of public and private books and a winner of the National Jewish Book Award. He is based in Needham, Mass., and welcomes readers’ comments at joel.segel@comcast.net.