unless an author can instantly move 100,000 copies of their books in 3 - 6 months, it is extremely unlikely a larger press with greater resources would ever pick up the manuscript.
I hope you mean that as a comedic exaggeration rather than a belief that that is how things are!
ANY editor at a larger house would be
delighted to move 100K copies in 3-6 months. Mega-print runs are rare unless it's with a writer they've published before who has a strong sales track record.
But the reality for commercial fiction is rather more practical, with lower, more realistic numbers for their mid-listers and first novelists.
My first novel's initial print run was around 3K copies.
I'm sure that number was based on how many books the
publisher needed to sell in order to turn a profit for themselves, not pay off my advance. To do
that, they needed to sell many, many more copies. (Which they did later, with more printings over a six-year period.)
A writer's advance is the smallest cost to any publisher.
It is a rookie mistake to sub to the smaller houses. They have high overheads, low profits, and generally have to be much more picky about what they accept.
The big houses are in a better position to take a chance on new writers. Editors are constantly on the lookout for the next best-seller.
I always tell neos to start at the top with the biggest house on the block and work down from there. You never know but that the first one might *like* your book.
Back when I was subbing that first one, the MS
did click with a small press. They wanted to see the whole manuscript. After 2 years of rejection letters, I was on Cloud Nine!
But before I could get it in the mail I got news that they'd gone bankrupt in the few days it had taken their snail-mail reply to get to me.
By then I was more PO'd than depressed and figured if a small press had been interested, then a large one would look at it, too, so off it went to the biggest name I could find under the Penguin umbrella.
Danged if it didn't work. They bought me right off the slush pile, no agent.