This was more of a stab at "semantic" part of the semantic versioning (which similar to <div> in semantic Web... found its own semantics that don't follow from its definitions). You are definitely not the only one using it like this.

I believe this is the problem with the format of semantic version which seem to assume that releases only happen to software ready to be... released :)

My preferred course of action in such situations is not specify a version at all.