# Pay per crawl, from the publisher side

"Pay per crawl" is usually described from the buyer's side: an AI company
pays a small amount each time its crawler fetches a page. This article
describes the same arrangement from the publisher's side, as Stoa Press runs
it through FORA.

## What a crawl is, to the publisher

To the publisher a crawl is not a page view. It is a licensed delivery: a
signed offer was accepted, a signed URL was issued, and the edge released the
content once. Each of those three steps leaves a record, and the record is
what gets paid for. An unlicensed fetch by an AI bot never reaches the
content; the edge answers it with a refusal that points at the machine-readable
rules, so there is no such thing as an unpaid crawl of a priced essay.

## How Stoa Press sets a per-crawl price

The catalogue uses three shapes, and each one is a per-crawl price in a
different disguise:

1. **Flat.** One price, one licence. The per-crawl price is the flat price.
   This is the shape used for the essays that a single reading exhausts.
2. **Per access.** A rate per delivery, with a daily quota. This is the
   literal pay-per-crawl shape, used where an agent is expected to come back.
3. **Per character or per token.** A rate on the size of what was delivered.
   The publisher uses this where a short essay and a long one should not cost
   the same.

The publisher chooses the shape per essay, and the choice is published in the
catalogue, not negotiated per buyer. Every agent sees the same offer for the
same resource.

## Why the prices are small

A per-crawl price is set to be accepted, not admired. An agent choosing
between several sources weighs relevance against cost, so a publisher that
prices a short article like a book sells nothing. Stoa Press keeps the
publisher-perspective articles in this section between 0.02 and 0.05 EUR per
licence. This article is offered at a flat 0.03 EUR.

## What the publisher gives up

Pay per crawl means the publisher no longer knows how the text is used after
delivery, only that it was delivered under a stated term. The term says what
is permitted (`ai-input`, `ai-index`, `search`) and what is not
(`ai-train`). The publisher relies on the term and on the transaction record.
That is the trade: predictable small payments, in exchange for the content
leaving the building.

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*Stoa Press · Publisher Perspectives · Markdown edition · illustrative demo material*