One Store Announces Winners of the 'One Story Web Novel Contest'... Plans to Adapt All Works into Webtoons

[Asia Economy Reporter Seungjin Lee] On the 3rd, One Store announced the final winners of the ‘2021 One Story Web Novel Contest’ and revealed plans to produce webtoons based on the winning works.

The contest, held over approximately four months from September last year to January this year, received over 700 submissions. Since 2017, One Store has been hosting web novel contests, and for the 5th edition, it significantly expanded the contest genres to secure diversity in submissions and provide opportunities for new writers. As a result, the number of entries more than doubled compared to the previous year, with about 70% of all applicants being new writers.

One Store selected one grand prize winner, three main prize winners, and two keyword prize winners from the submissions in two parts: Fantasy/Martial Arts and Mystery/Thriller, and Romance Fantasy/Romance. The grand prize and main prize works will be produced as 100% webtoons. Additionally, one ‘Wave Award’ winner, selected in collaboration with the OTT platform Wave, will be given priority consideration for video adaptation.

The grand prize in the Fantasy/Martial Arts and Mystery/Thriller category was awarded to The Brother, author of ‘The Genius Manager Who Sees Algorithms.’ The main prizes went to ‘My Own Money Media Company’ (author U Brothers), ‘The Return of the Genius of the Magic Family’ (author kane), and ‘21st Century Magic Kingdom’ (author Green Fox).

In the Romance/Romance Fantasy category, the grand prize was awarded to Yoon Heesa for ‘Stepmom is Raising Realistic Childcare!’ The main prizes were awarded to ‘Are You a Fox? I’m a Rabbit’ (author Mulgyung), ‘Good Luck Comes If You Believe!’ (author Yoon Ji-eun), and ‘Secretary Husband’ (author Tam Haerin).

The newly established ‘Wave Award’ since 2021 was given to ‘Detective in a Dream’ (author Cocoa Psycho), which is currently under video adaptation review by Studio Wave.

Other keyword prizes, which correspond to popularity awards, were given as follows: ‘Chef Award’ to ‘I Became a Genius Chef’ (author Hyunwoo001), ‘Death Game Award’ to ‘The World Turned into a Messy Death Game’ (author Restart), ‘Refreshing Award’ to ‘The Dad Must Be Crazy’ (author Chae Woo-sol), and ‘Obsession Award’ to ‘The Reincarnated Snake God is Obsessed with Me’ (author Ailipharo).

The winning works were selected based on five evaluation criteria: originality, commercial viability, popularity, sincerity, and IP expansion potential. Considerations included not only artistic quality and popularity but also the potential for utilization in various fields in the future. Preliminary judging involved internal One Store judges and external judges recommended by the partner company ‘Story Tree,’ while the final judging included ‘Rock Media,’ a genre novel specialized publisher, to enhance professionalism and fairness.

In addition to webtoon production, One Store will support authors’ creative activities and encourage serialization by providing a total prize money and advance payments worth approximately 320 million KRW. The results of this contest can be found in the announcements section on the One Story Studio website.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.