diff --git a/lib/travis/build-sdist/before_install.sh b/lib/travis/build-sdist/before_install.sh
index 7edc00ad9e..ccc4a9e664 100755
--- a/lib/travis/build-sdist/before_install.sh
+++ b/lib/travis/build-sdist/before_install.sh
@@ -5,4 +5,5 @@ set -o nounset -o pipefail -o errexit
 # Prepare environment for building the Python packages
 
 sudo apt-get -qq update
+sudo apt-get -yq install python3-pypandoc
 pip3 install --upgrade pip wheel setuptools
diff --git a/lib/travis/build-wheel/before_install.sh b/lib/travis/build-wheel/before_install.sh
index 7edc00ad9e..ccc4a9e664 100755
--- a/lib/travis/build-wheel/before_install.sh
+++ b/lib/travis/build-wheel/before_install.sh
@@ -5,4 +5,5 @@ set -o nounset -o pipefail -o errexit
 # Prepare environment for building the Python packages
 
 sudo apt-get -qq update
+sudo apt-get -yq install python3-pypandoc
 pip3 install --upgrade pip wheel setuptools
diff --git a/setup.py b/setup.py
index 78b9667bd5..4984ff1f88 100755
--- a/setup.py
+++ b/setup.py
@@ -7,9 +7,11 @@
 
 try:
     import pypandoc
-    README = pypandoc.convert('README.md', 'rst')
+    README = pypandoc.convert_file('README.md', 'rst')
 except(IOError, ImportError):
-    README = open('README.md').read()
+    print('Error: The "pandoc" support is required to convert '
+          'the README.md to reStructuredText format')
+    raise
 
 try:
     unicode