[Wowfunhappy]

But with Kindle Unlimited, you run into the "Someone Else's Money" problem.

Say a user reads the first page of 100 different books—they can do that, because opening each new book has zero marginal cost for the user. Does Amazon now need to pay authors for 100 books?

I don't know how Netflix payouts work but I have to imagine that viewer time is taken into account.

[Kuiper]

My understanding is that Netflix just pays a fixed, pre-agreed amount up front (either paying a licensing fee for existing content, or funding the production of their own Netflix originals). If lots of people view a show, Netflix takes that data into account when deciding whether or not to renew the the licensing contract (in the case of existing shows) or order a new season (in the case of Netflix's original productions).

Because Netflix pays for their content up front, they have to take a bit of a gamble. (Maybe they spend a bunch of money for a new Coen Brothers film, but nobody watches it, so they take a loss on that project. Or, as was the case in 2008, maybe TV networks grossly under-estimate the value of their catalog of old shows, so Netflix gets to pay peanuts for the content that serves as the bread and butter.)

[michaelbuckbee]

To your question of "Does Amazon now need to pay 100 different authors?" the answer is "yes".

My understanding is that they tally that up and pay each of the authors at the end of the month with a single payment of the KU revenue, directly paid for books, etc. As each book can be bought multiple ways. Though note this only applies for self-published books as otherwise, it all goes back to the publisher.

[portmanteaufu]

You've changed the question. Amazon already pays 100 different authors in this scenario--they each get paid for the single page that was read from each of their books. Paying for 100 books would be much more expensive than paying for 100 pages like they do now.