We investigated individual variability in the prosodic encoding of lexical and referential givenness in German. Additionally, we related this variability to self-assessed communicative skill in our participants. In an interactive reading task, we collected data from 20 speakers producing eight short stories. In each story, the same target word occurred as lexically (l-) and referentially (r-)new or given, and in combinations of these levels. We measured several prosodic correlates of prominence in the target words. Across speakers, l-new referents were marked by longer duration and higher periodic energy than l-given referents, while r-new referents were marked by higher periodic energy and higher intensity than r-given ones. While speakers were remarkably similar in their encoding of l-givenness, only differing in how strongly they modified duration and periodic energy, there was a more striking contrast in the encoding of r-givenness: One group of speakers exclusively relied on periodic energy and intensity, the other group additionally used higher F0 to mark r-newness. Differences in the produced givenness contrasts across speakers proved to be related to communicative skill, albeit in opposite ways: L-givenness was marked more strongly by speakers with higher communicative skill, r-givenness was marked more strongly by speakers with lower communicative skill.