Tipped Over

This post is on a topic that I find a bit mystifying. In what seems to be an attemt to fight the rising ebook tide, Hodder has published a series of what they call 'flipbacks'. They say they're "something completely original, a perfectly formed, portable, pocket-sized treat", and that they licensed the design from the Dutch publisher who invented them.

They seem to be like normal books turned on their side, and printed on what I assume to be very thin Gideon's-Bible-style paper--hardly a patentable revolution, I would have thought. Has anyone seen one of these in the wild? Is that all there is to them? Wouldn't turning pages up, calendar-wise, be a bit irritating?

And there seems to have been a missed opportunity for cover art here--they've just taken the existing covers and recropped them...

..when they could have done something new with the landscape format, perhaps along the lines of these movie-still James M. Cain covers.

If you've seen on or, even better, read one, please leave a comment and tell me what I'm missing here.