FictionPress does not read chapters aloud on its own. Open a story in Chrome or Edge, press play, and keep going through the serial while your eyes rest.
What people ask before installing
No. FictionPress has no built-in read-aloud feature. Stories are plain HTML pages, which is why a browser reader such as CastReader — or your browser's own read-aloud mode — works on them.
Not by itself. The site shows the chapter as ordinary text and leaves reading to you. CastReader speaks that text in place, so you stay on the FictionPress page rather than pasting chapters elsewhere.
Install CastReader from the Chrome Web Store, open any chapter, and click the CastReader icon. It reads the story text with the current paragraph highlighted.
FictionPress is FanFiction.net's sister site for original work rather than fanfiction — same people, same site engine. Neither has a built-in reader, and the same setup works on both.
It works here and it is free. It reads the whole page, offers a limited voice set, and does not remember where you stopped between sessions — which is the part that matters on a story you follow over weeks.
Free to start, no account. Playback speeds above 1.25x and premium voices are CastReader Pro features.
Yes. It reads ordinary web pages, so FanFiction.net, AO3, Wattpad, Royal Road and Scribble Hub all work the same way.
Download the CastReader app for DRM-free EPUB import and supported mobile reading workflows.
Hard numbers — not vibes — from authoritative sources
$2.22 billion
US audiobook sales in 2024, up 13% year-over-year (Publishers Weekly / Audio Publishers Association)
Source →51%
of US adults have listened to an audiobook in 2025 — roughly 134 million people (APA Consumer Survey 2025)
Source →2.2 billion
people globally with near- or far-vision impairment (WHO Fact Sheet, 2024). TTS is the primary access path for digital reading content.
Source →78%
of audiobook listeners multitask while listening — commute, chores, exercise (Audiolibrix Great Audiobook Survey, 2024)
Source →27.2 minutes
average single-trip US commute in 2024, up from 26.8 (US Census ACS via Statista). That's nearly an hour each day of audio-only time.
Source →effect size 0.35
measured comprehension lift from TTS for reading-disabled students across 22 studies (Wood, Moxley, Tighe & Wagner, Journal of Learning Disabilities, 2018)
Source →15.5 million
US adults with ADHD per CDC 2024 — about half diagnosed in adulthood (CDC MMWR, October 2024)
Source →Every Chrome Web Store review below is verifiable at the link in each card. We don't hide negative feedback — we answer it within 24 hours.
“This is 1 of the best TTS and its smooth. If this is truly free i'll keep this 100%. Every other TTS says its free but has a secret. They interrupt or they just say better ai voices pay. But i like this voice. I've tried loads and this is 1 of the best ones that actually says free.”
“Works perfectly on vivaldi. One suggestion though. I wish it had a play button appear next to a paragraph when we hover over it. Just like in the case of speechify.”
“Extremely user friendly short keys. Placed forward backward and speed up down as Natural as it could be. Voices are great and smooth. I would recommend it over many hyped products.”
“At the very least it's better than many paid TTS models. Still not as good as ElevenReader or LAP, but maybe the best free model for TTS.”
“So glad I can finally switch voices! The default was fine but I found one I actually enjoy listening to for hours. Small thing, huge difference.”
“Best one i found, user friendly, and great voice over.”
“ChatGPT's long answers are finally listenable. Let it generate while I listen — doubles my productivity. Love the inline button next to each response.”
“I tried using this add-on to listen to an ebook on the O'Reilly learning platform, and it works smoothly. However, it always restarts from the first paragraph whenever I scroll or select a different paragraph. Please consider adding a bookmark or checkpoint feature so users can mark where the reading should begin.”
↪ Founder reply
Replied by CastReader founder Yan Xu within 48 hours: acknowledged the issue, shipped a bookmark feature in the following release. Reviewer's verbatim feedback drove the v1.2 roadmap.
“Need to highlight text and select it.”
“Hard to select text.”
↪ Founder reply
Replied by CastReader founder Yan Xu within 24 hours: apologized, asked which site/browser the issue occurred on, provided a workaround using the keyboard shortcut, and offered direct support at support@castreader.com.
We re-test, re-write, and ship continuously. Every entry has a real date.
Rewrote landing pages with verbatim Chrome Web Store testimonials, real audiobook market data, and tested-12-extensions methodology. Every claim now has a sourceable link.
CastReader provides native apps for iPhone and Android; Android downloads are available directly from Google Play.
Wrote up the OCR pipeline: how CastReader handles Amazon's 184 random font alphabets and 361 unique glyphs per Kindle book. Shared in dev.to.
The phone app flow now has its own landing page for bookshelf sync, Read Aloud, synced highlighting, auto-scroll, background playback, and resume progress.
Ranked #10 in Daily, 99 upvotes, 4 community comments shaped the v1.2 roadmap.
Switched from older TTS engines to Kokoro neural voices. User reviews shifted from 'usable but robotic' to 'enjoy listening for hours' (verbatim from review by patrick chiang).
OCR success rate improved from 78% to 89% on English-language Kindle books. Multi-column page detection added for academic PDFs.
I built CastReader because I owned hundreds of Kindle books and couldn't listen to them on my morning runs without buying separate Audible copies. The technical problem — Amazon's Cloud Reader font encryption — turned out to be solvable with OCR. The product problem — making it actually pleasant across phones, desktops, and 9 supported languages — took two years of iteration. We're a small team. I answer every Chrome Web Store review personally (see testimonials above — including the 3-star and 1-star ones). If something's broken or missing, email support@castreader.com.
— Yan Xu, founder
Last reviewed: · CastReader Team — reviewed against 2025 testing data
Open a story, press play, see whether an hour of it holds up. Free to start, no account.
For local PDF, DOCX, TXT, Markdown, and images, plus supported webpages and browser-based readers. Local EPUB import is not available.
For DRM-free EPUBs and mobile reading on iPhone, iPad, and Android.
Official App Store and Google Play downloads · Chrome, Edge, and Firefox extensions