What Amazon Art means for the market Andy Warhol's screenprints of Chairman Mao also feature on the site. If the million-dollar paintings are a stunt to make customers aware of the section, they seem to have worked, and in any case Amazon risks nothing by listing them. The site does not own or store any of the works itself, but instead collaborates with around 150 galleries who give up a slice of the commission on each sale - between five and 20 per cent, according to some reports - in return for Amazon bringing their art to a larger, international audience. Isobel Beauchamp, co-founder of the UK site DegreeArt.com, which is collaborating with Amazon, agreed that most sales would be made in the mid-market. "The average basket for us online is about £800," she says. There used to be a ceiling of about £500 to £800 that people would transact online. It's increasing all the time though, and people tend to spend a bit more each time they come back to the site. This tallies with Amazon Art's listings, where most works are actually priced between $1,000 and $2,500. Opportunity or threat? And Beauchamp feels vindicated rather than threatened by the web giant's entry into the marketplace. "When we started [in 2003], everyone said "no, you can't sell art online, what a ridiculous idea," and now one of the biggest companies in the world is doing it." Since DegreeArt was founded, buying art "blind" online has become increasingly normalised, with only around half of the gallery's pieces now being sold to people who have physically seen the work. We're excited to be involved and one of the founding galleries. It's given us a much bigger scope than we would have otherwise, especially in America. Amazon really respects the galleries" way of working, we still have our own way of doing things. I'm not worried about them starting to dominate the market and set terms; if I know gallerists they are going to be quite adamant about how they are going to be treated. Osborne, too, says he feels unthreatened by Amazon Art as an independent gallerist. With any independent gallery you get to talk to experts, you get the work brought to your house for free, you get someone to talk to about any tax you're liable to pay on a work. People who want to undercut us go to auctions but often they still pay more. Anyway, none of this is new: large sites like the Amercian ArtNet.com have been selling art online for years. Amazon is collaborating with around 150 galleries for the new section. What sets Amazon apart, though, is just how huge it is. Chris Conway, managing director at LocalBookshops.co.uk said the gallerists were dangerously naive if they thought Amazon could not change the art market in a similar way to how it reshaped the publishing landscape. If the mid-market is the real target, and customers are buying art as decoration rather than investment or making a prestige purchase, then Amazon's convenience and ubiquity gives it a serious advantage. At some point the monster turns and eats its keeper "If I take you back 15 years, booksellers were saying the same things," Conway says. Publishers were given favourable terms to get involved and at some point the monster turns and eats its keeper. It sounds like Amazon's a friend to the world in general but in practice Amazon's interest is Amazon. They don't care about small galleries, or even particularly artists. While "showrooming" - deciding which book to buy in the shop and then ordering it on the internet, one of the practices which is undermining bricks-and-mortar bookshops - is less possible with original artworks (though many of those listed on Amazon Art are prints), Conway believes Amazon will still start undercutting gallery prices. I can believe they're not making very much money on the channel at the moment, to kick start it with lower prices at the mid-range. People start thinking "that's cheaper" and then Amazon can start dictating terms back to galleries in the way they did publishers. Gallerists think they're offering something unique, but how long before "If you liked X you may also like Y" becomes as accurate as their recommendations?" The new platform may shake up the market in another respect, giving unknown artists the possibility of reaching a mass audience in the same way online self-publishing has shaken up the book industry; but, as Conway points out, increased visibility is no guarantee of increased talent. He is confident Amazon Art will change the market, but unsure how it may change art itself. If the medium has come through the age of mechanical reproduction, now it must brace itself for the age of centralised distribution.