Confusion regarding plot of linear convolution vs fast convolution via FFT
The variable NI in the book is just a typo, it should be N instead (not N*L as in your code). Apart from that, remember that book was written about $25$ years ago, and the code was run on a $33$ MHz $486$ PC. So in order to see some effects on today's computers, you should crank up the value of L.
I've modified the code a bit (see below). Now the figure illustrates the expected result.

L = 200:500:10000;
K = length(L);
conv_time = zeros(1,K); fft_time = zeros(1,K);
Nav = 10;

for k = 1:K
    tc = 0; tf=0;
    Lk = L(k);
    N = 2*Lk-1; nu = ceil(log10(N)/log10(2)); N = 2^nu;
    for I=1:Nav
        h = randn(1,Lk); x = rand(1,Lk);
        t0 = clock; y1 = conv(h,x); t1=etime(clock,t0); tc = tc+t1;
        t0 = clock; y2 = ifft(fft(h,N).*fft(x,N)); t2=etime(clock,t0);
        tf = tf+t2;
    end
    conv_time(k)=tc/Nav; fft_time(k)=tf/Nav;
end

plot(L,conv_time,L,fft_time)