Not sure what to make of this, whether it signals a new trend or is just kind of a weird one-off thing but NBC News has started an e-publishing division. Publishers Weekly reports that the company plans to publish about 30 titles in its first full year of operation. As for material, a lot of it will be gathered from the assorted properties of NBC.

In addition to using the various NBC News units (Today, NBC Nightly News, Dateline, Peacock Productions, and NBCs archives), NBC Publishing will have the ability to create works derived from other divisions of NBCUniversal, such as NBC Sports, Universal Pictures, and Telemundo. E-books will be based on current events, documentaries, trends, biographies, and profiles.

So get ready for “Willard Scott Tells You Who Turned 100 Years Old Sponsored by Smuckers: The E-Book” coming soon to a screen or site or whatever near you sometime soon.

I guess I’m mystified why a big investment is being made in turning television into electronic books. It’s not clear whether the books will be static, Kindle-like works that look like real books on a screen or whether they’ll be interactive titles with video and music and all that.