diff --git a/.circleci/config.yml b/.circleci/config.yml
index 0a6e8dc..2c7d0fa 100644
--- a/.circleci/config.yml
+++ b/.circleci/config.yml
@@ -22,7 +22,7 @@ jobs:
           command: |
             bash <(curl -s https://codecov.io/bash)
 
-  # The publish job only gets scheduled for commits to master; see workflows section below
+  # This publish job only runs for builds triggered by a git tag; see workflows section below.
   publish:
     docker:
       - image: mozilla/sbt:8u171_0.13.13
@@ -38,9 +38,12 @@ workflows:
   test-publish:
     jobs:
       - test
+      # Publish only runs on builds triggered by a new git tag of form vX.X.X
       - publish:
           requires:
             - test
           filters:
             branches:
-              only: master
+              ignore: /.*/
+            tags:
+              only: /^v.*/
diff --git a/.gitignore b/.gitignore
index 132642d..295b971 100644
--- a/.gitignore
+++ b/.gitignore
@@ -3,4 +3,8 @@ target/
 .idea/
 .idea_modules/
 .DS_Store
-*.pyc
\ No newline at end of file
+*.pyc
+venv/
+.tox/
+*.egg-info/
+.pytest_cache/
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
index f76d9b4..a7cf05b 100644
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -44,5 +44,16 @@ yields:
 ```
 
 ### Deployment
-Any commits to master should also trigger a circleci build that will do the sbt publishing for you
-to our local maven repo in s3 and to spark-packages.org.
+
+To publish a new version of the package, you need to
+[create a new release on GitHub](https://github.com/mozilla/spark-hyperloglog/releases/new)
+with a tag version starting with `v` like `v2.2.0`. The tag will trigger a CircleCI build
+that publishes to Mozilla's maven repo in S3.
+
+The CircleCI build will also attempt to publish the new tag to spark-packages.org,
+but due to
+[an outstanding bug in the sbt-spark-package plugin](https://github.com/databricks/sbt-spark-package/issues/31)
+that publish will likely fail. You can retry locally until is succeeds by creating a GitHub
+personal access token and, exporting the environment variables `GITHUB_USERNAME` and
+`GITHUB_PERSONAL_ACCESS_TOKEN`, and then repeatedly running `sbt spPublish` until you get a
+non-404 response.
diff --git a/VERSION b/VERSION
deleted file mode 100644
index ccbccc3..0000000
--- a/VERSION
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1 +0,0 @@
-2.2.0
diff --git a/build.sbt b/build.sbt
index 37f308d..bc8b62c 100644
--- a/build.sbt
+++ b/build.sbt
@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
 name := "spark-hyperloglog"
 
-version := scala.io.Source.fromFile("VERSION").mkString.stripLineEnd
+version := sys.env.getOrElse("CIRCLE_TAG", "v2.2-SNAPSHOT").stripPrefix("v")
 
 scalaVersion := "2.11.8"
 
@@ -25,6 +25,25 @@ credentials += Credentials(
   sys.env.getOrElse("GITHUB_USERNAME", ""),
   sys.env.getOrElse("GITHUB_PERSONAL_ACCESS_TOKEN", ""))
 
+
+// Include the contents of the python/ directory at the root of our packaged jar;
+// `sbt spPublish` handles including python files for the zip sent to spark-packages.org,
+// but we also want the python bindings to be present in the jar we upload to S3 maven
+// via `sbt publish`.
+val pythonBesidesPyspark = new SimpleFileFilter({ f =>
+  val pythonDir = "/spark-hyperloglog/python"
+  val pyLibDir = pythonDir + "/pyspark_hyperloglog"
+  val p = f.getCanonicalPath
+  p match {
+    case _ if p.contains(pyLibDir) => false  // Don't exclude contents of pyspark dir
+    case _ if p.contains(pythonDir + "/") => true  // Exclude everything else under python/
+    case _ => false  // Don't exclude other files not under python/
+  }
+})
+unmanagedResourceDirectories in Compile += baseDirectory.value / "python"
+excludeFilter in unmanagedResources :=
+  HiddenFileFilter || pythonBesidesPyspark || "*.pyc" || "*.egg*"
+
 publishMavenStyle := true
 
 publishTo := {
diff --git a/python/VERSION b/python/VERSION
deleted file mode 120000
index 6ff19de..0000000
--- a/python/VERSION
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1 +0,0 @@
-../VERSION
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/python/setup.py b/python/setup.py
index a73ed67..ce6039b 100644
--- a/python/setup.py
+++ b/python/setup.py
@@ -1,11 +1,11 @@
 from setuptools import setup
+import os
 
-with open('VERSION', 'r') as f:
-    VERSION = f.read().strip()
+version = os.environ.get('CIRCLE_TAG', 'v2.2.snapshot').lstrip('v')
 
 setup(
     name='pyspark-hyperloglog',
-    version=VERSION.split('-')[0],
+    version=version,
     description='PySpark UDFs for HyperLogLog',
     keywords=['spark', 'udf', 'hyperloglog'],
     author='Anthony Miyaguchi',