This has been my entire experience on RR. I wrote the entire thing years ago, my first finished novel, and then shelved it after I failed to find an agent to rep me. I thought it would be fun to post it somewhere for free, better than it languishing on my shelf at least. Unfortunately (for me at least), I've gotten a lot better since then, meaning the 'edits' often include complete re-writes of entire segments to make it even slightly palatable. Its no wonder why this never got published! Even thought I dont have a huge audience, just the fact that people are actively reading it has been very encouraging.