diff --git a/MANIFEST.in b/MANIFEST.in
index e129ae10dcb019c6bcf525ffd34a3c28384c83f0..fd1b94181fc5ddf829f4bcc7b212b673e5b8ae92 100644
--- a/MANIFEST.in
+++ b/MANIFEST.in
@@ -1,2 +1,2 @@
-include README.rst bootstrap.py buildout.cfg COPYING
+include README.rst bootstrap.py buildout.cfg COPYING version.txt
 recursive-include doc *.py *.rst
diff --git a/setup.py b/setup.py
index 372747686d6d90dd721f05348c2e0353b8211aab..c2c2a264a247081564d1a454747105268491050b 100644
--- a/setup.py
+++ b/setup.py
@@ -18,12 +18,15 @@
 
 from setuptools import setup, find_packages
 
+# Define package version
+version = open("version.txt").read().rstrip()
+
 # The only thing we do in this file is to call the setup() function with all
 # parameters that define our package.
 setup(
 
     name='bob.db.mnist',
-    version='2.0.0a0',
+    version=version,
     description='MNIST Database Access API for Bob',
     url='https://pypi.python.org/pypi/bob.db.mnist',
     license='GPLv3',
diff --git a/version.txt b/version.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000..82d45615df23a942b7d374ee020d3b4fbdf53939
--- /dev/null
+++ b/version.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+2.0.0a3