Here's a couple sites that might help - http://www.geekcal.com/Locations/Interactive-Convention-Map.html http://www.locusmag.com/Resources/Conventions.html These are mostly SF, though the first one covers some gaming cons as well. Hope you find something you enjoy! Cons are fun (and exhausting, and...).

Speaking as a reader - authors who desperately seek readers for their books are a turn-off in any medium (sandwich boards, emails, blogs, Twitter, Facebook if I facebooked...if it's all links-to-my-books and "Read my books!" I'm bored and gone in no time). Authors (and others) who are willing to act like people and thereby lure me in to being interested in what they've written/shown/otherwise produced are fun. Most of the authors I follow on Twitter I already knew - which means their recommendations are automatically interesting. I've also read books suggested by agents and other publishing-business people, and quite a few suggested by the science and music people I follow. But I follow all of them because I'm interested in what they have to say, not because they feed me books - even good books. And Charles Dickens did lecture tours, I believe. I don't think he lectured about his books...just told people interesting things and made them interested in him and his work. Sounds like a good model to me (updated - now you don't have to travel so much to lecture. Blogs are good...)

Have you checked out your local libraries? Most of the ones around here have ebooks that you can 'check out' for a couple weeks - using your library card, just like checking out a physical book. I don't know, though, if they have ones that are compatible with iPad.