VG-Wort

What is it?
What does it do?
What does that mean for you?

What is the VG-Wort?

The VG-Wort association was founded in 1958 to protect the copyright of authors and publishers. In 1978 a separate collecting society for sciences was established within the VG-Wort.

What is the role of the VG-Wort?

As a result of the technical improvement of our society, illegal copying and secondary utilisation is easier and more widely-spread, being unmanageable for authors and publishers. The VG-Wort collects charges for many of these utilisations and pays a remuneration to authors and publishers every year.

Where do the proceeds of the VG-Wort come from?

The revenue of the VG-Wort from protecting copyrights added up to the amount of 79.1 million Euro in 2004. The most important sources of income are:

• library royalties and reader circles for borrowing and renting of books
• charges for public TV and radio rendition with the possibility of private recording
• copy charges for production, import and running of copying machines
• press review charges for the reprint of articles

Who participates in the remuneration of the VG-Wort?

The amount of beneficiaries is constantly increasing. In 2004 a total of 132,877 receivers were counted, 127,171 authors and 5,706 publishers.

Holders of copyrights on written works as well as scientific or technical graphs who reside in Germany, are German or members of the EU can forward the right to protect their work to the VG-Wort and therefore participate in the remuneration once. For this, a contract has to be signed between author and publisher. The entitled persons are divided into the following categories:

• authors and translators of fictional and dramaturgical literature
• journalists, authors and translators of non-fictional literature
• authors and translators of scientific and specialist literature
• publishers of fictional and non-fictional literature
• stage publishers
• publishers of scientific works and specialist literature

Within the collecting society for science the remuneration can be paid without having signed a contract, but can be done on the basis of title registration of specialised scientific books and articles in books and scientific journals.

How high is the payout by the VG-Wort?

The total of all remunerations in 2004 was 53.11 million Euro.

The average remuneration for each author was 380 Euro in 2003.

Why do we inform you about the work of the VG-Wort?

As an author you should make use of the possibilities of protecting your copyrights and profiting from all kinds of utilisations by others. The following advantages for you arise from the collaboration with a publisher:

• cooperation and mutual amendment of the work by author and publisher
• the possibility of making use of the activity of the VG-Wort and therefore achieving a maximum of profits

More about the VG-Wort

Additional information about the VG-Wort on more than 100 pages can be obtained from http://www.vgwort.de/

Application forms for the VG-Wort

As an author with Shaker, you will receive an application form together with the author's copies of your book.

Since November 1^st, 2003, it has been possible for scientific authors to register online. So far, more than 6,000 authors with over 25,000 contributions have made use of this possibility.

Dates