With OpenReader, any EPUB, PDF, Word document, Markdown file, or plain text book transforms into an interactive reading workspace paired with natural text-to-speech playback and multi-chapter audiobook export. Documents render natively in their original page layout rather than flattening into plain text, using layout-aware block detection and cross-page stitching so multi-column academic papers, technical manuals, and textbooks flow in the right reading order while skipping headers and footnotes. As narration plays, word-level forced alignment highlights each spoken word directly on the page in real time, and progressive background generation starts audio playback on the first segment while synthesizing upcoming pages ahead of your cursor. Readers can connect local speech engines such as Kokoro, KittenTTS, and Orpheus or cloud voice providers, select language-aware voices for multilingual books, adjust playback speed, and switch among thirteen light and dark reading themes. Cached audio segments persist across seeks and browser reloads, allowing the background worker to assemble complete M4B or MP3 audiobooks for offline listening on mobile devices while syncing reading progress, queues, and library imports across sessions. Running on a dedicated VPS on RepoCloud with guaranteed CPU, RAM, and SSD, full root SSH access, and a browser serial console. MIT licensed.