But many of the author's points don't apply to philosophy papers, either - when philosophers are deciding what to write they don't start with their conclusion any more than scientists and engineers do. Likewise, the author's claim not to have been convinced by a philosophical paper seems odd to me, and suggests he doesn't have much familiarity with philosophy. If anything, I think there are more influential papers than books in philosophy, particularly of the analytic sort; think of Quine's "Two Dogmas of Empiricism," Gettier's "Is Justified True Belief Knowledge," or Putnam's "The Meaning of Meaning," for instance, all of which are more influential than any of the books written by these authors.