Julia Grant couldn’t find a publisher for her memoir. Michelle Obama got paid millions for hers.

When former first lady Julia Grant finished her memoir in 1899, with the help of one Mark Twain, she couldn’t find a publisher for it.

“My book, on which I have built so many castles, is by the critics pronounced too near, too close to the private life of [her husband], and I thought this was just what was wanted. You can well imagine my great disappointment and sorrow,” the widow of Ulysses S. Grant wrotein a letter to a friend.

Times, to put it mildly, have changed.