An open-source, self-hostable synced narration platform for ebooks
Hi, I made a thing! This is by far the most work I've ever sunk into a side project; I've been working on this thing for over two years, and I'm super proud of it, even though there's still a lot more to do! Storyteller is a self-hosted platform for ebooks with synced narration. This is basically self-hosted WhisperSync, for anyone familiar with that Amazon product. It's currently made up of two self-hostable backend systems and a mobile app for reading and listening to the books it produces. Technically it uses an open spec, EPUB 3's "Media Overlay", for syncing the narration, but very few…
An open-source, self-hostable synced narration platform for ebooks launched on December 23, 2023 with 338 votes, #80 of 3,780 launches that month and more than 99% of that year's launches. The site was not reachable when checked in September 2026.
In plain words
Storyteller is a self-hosted platform that synchronizes narration with ebooks, similar to Amazon's WhisperSync. It consists of two self-hostable backend systems and a mobile app for reading and listening to synced books, using the open EPUB 3 Media Overlay specification. The app is available on the Apple App Store as Storyteller Reader, with Android support planned. It is designed for users who want to host their own synced audiobook and ebook system.
written from the facts on this page · September 2026
From the sources
In the maker’s words, at launch
Hi, I made a thing! This is by far the most work I've ever sunk into a side project; I've been working on this thing for over two years, and I'm super proud of it, even though there's still a lot more to do! Storyteller is a self-hosted platform for ebooks with synced narration. This is basically self-hosted…
Does a similar job
all alternatives →- SE@smoores/epub, a JavaScript library for working with EPUB publications2024 · npmjs.com · ▲156
Howdy! I've just written a blog post about this, and I figured I would share it here: https://smoores.dev/post/announcing_smoores_epub/. As I've been working on Storyteller[1], I've been developing a library for working with EPUB files, since that's a large amount of the work that Storyteller does. After a friend asked for advice on creating EPUB books in Node.js, I decided to publish Storyteller's EPUB library as a standalone NPM package. I really love the EPUB spec, and I think the Node.js developer community deserves an actively maintained library for working with…
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