King finished the first draft of IT in the late spring of 1981. During the summer of that year, Jack Rems and Jeff Frane were soliciting contributions for a book that was going to be presented as a gift to the visitors of the seventh edition of the World Fantasy Convention. This three-day convention was held each year around the time of Halloween. In 1981, it took place in Berkeley, California, from October 30th to November 1st. A thousand copies of the anthology were printed and the book was titled A Fantasy Reader: The Seventh World Fantasy Convention Book.

As Jack Rems remembers it, he asked King for “the last dozen or so pages out of his typewriter”. What King sent could not have been the last pages out of his typewriter, however, as the draft was finished by this point. King’s contribution to the Fantasy Reader consisted of pages 632 to 639 of the first draft: the complete first subchapter and 26 lines of subchapter 2 from chapter 13: “The Bird and the Album” (retitled to “The Album” in the third draft). It’s the scene with the adults in the library where Mike opens his refrigerator to see the talking severed head of young Stan. Why King chose to submit these eight pages is unknown. They were reproduced verbatim in the Reader under the title “The Bird and the Album: an excerpt”, preceded by a short bio and a description of the text.

In the published novel (that came out five years after this prepublication), this became chapter 14, and the title was changed to simply “The Album”. The reason for this is that in the first draft Mike’s encounter with the bird Rodan was written out in chapter 13, and during the editorial process King moved that story to chapter 6, “One of the Missing”.

There are a few differences between this version and the published text. King’s most notable revision is to one of the derogatory things the severed head of Stan says to Mike. He tells him to get out of Derry if he knows how to use his head. In the prepublication text, Stan adds: “We don’t need people like you in Derry. No jigs, no coons, no midnight bombers. Your lips is too thick and you smell like polecat oil even if you shower four times a day. Your cock’s too long and you’re rhythm’s too natural. So use your head, Mikey” (A Fantasy Reader, page 83). King removed the racial slurs in his subsequent draft. There are other, similar revisions throughout the writing process where racist remarks made to Mike Hanlon or to his father were cut. Racism in Derry is still a theme of the published novel, but it was even more explicit in the first draft, as this published fragment shows.

The book for the WFC 7 turned out beautifully, with contributions by Robert Bloch, Peter Straub, T.E.D. Klein, Fritz Leiber, Ramsey Cambell, and many others. King attended the conference and signed quite a few of these books.