diff --git a/happybase/__init__.py b/happybase/__init__.py
index bc58455..4ca4320 100644
--- a/happybase/__init__.py
+++ b/happybase/__init__.py
@@ -2,6 +2,6 @@
 HappyBase, a pythonic interface for HBase using Thrift
 """
 
-__version__ = '0.1'
+from .version import __version__
 
 from .api import *
diff --git a/happybase/version.py b/happybase/version.py
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0f127c0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/happybase/version.py
@@ -0,0 +1,4 @@
+
+# package version for user in __init__.py and setup.py
+__version__ = '0.1'
+
diff --git a/setup.py b/setup.py
index c8aa11c..4c33f99 100644
--- a/setup.py
+++ b/setup.py
@@ -1,10 +1,10 @@
 from os.path import join, dirname
 from setuptools import find_packages, setup
 
-import happybase
+execfile('happybase/version.py')
 
 setup(name='happybase',
-      version=happybase.__version__,
+      version=__version__,
       description="A developer-friendly Python library to interact "
                   "with Apache HBase",
       long_description=open(join(dirname(__file__), 'README.rst')).read(),