Hello Baby Bargains readers! We’ve got a new edition coming out in April—the 12th edition! But who’s counting?

We wanted to post about the new book because we’ve given Baby Bargains a makeover. After reaching out to our readers over the past year, we decided to streamline the book and focus more on our popular picks for best crib, car seat, stroller and 20 other gear categories.

What do we mean by streamline? Let’s take a look at the crib chapter, for example. In previous editions, we’d have a 30-page intro on how to shop for a crib. Then we’d write another 50 pages on crib brand reviews. Finally, we’d have 2 or 3 pages on which cribs we actually recommend.

We decided to turn our discussion of cribs on its head. Now we have EXPANDED our recommended cribs section to include detailed recommendations by lifestyle. Yes, we have a best crib overall—but now we’ve added best crib for space-challenged urban parents, best eco-friendly crib, best high style crib, best travel/portable crib and best crib for grandma’s house. Of course, our comprehensive chart comparing crib brands and ratings is still in there!

To make room for this, we’ve moved all our specific crib brand reviews to our new free web site. And we boiled down the chapter intro on how to buy a crib into a new concept: 7 Things No One Tells You About Buying a Crib.

We followed this format for every chapter and added in recommendations for products that once were exclusively on our web page (such as baby food processors and storage).

The resulting book is shorter than previous edition: 288 pages versus 600+ pages before. The goal is make the book an easier read by focusing on what folks told us they need most.

Why move the in-depth brand reviews to our web site? Well, it is a space/time issue. When the very first edition of Baby Bargains came out in 1994, we had 8 stroller brand reviews. And that just about covered the ENTIRE stroller market.

Today, we have 53 strollers brands sold in North America. 53. As the number grew in recent years, we added pages to the book. And then we had to put some of the reviews of the stroller makers that didn’t fit in the book on the web site (last time 16 stroller brand reviews ended up moving to our web site). We also had to do this with cribs and car seats as well. So we ended up having a book with part of the reviews in print and part online, which ended up being confusing.

Since the trend toward more stuff, more brands, more choices appears to continue at record pace, we decided to move ALL the brand reviews online and refocus the book on top recommendations. We can now update these reviews on a rolling basis, as models and prices change (that’s the time issue), so you always have the latest model line-ups at your fingertips. Our new web site is now mobile-friendly with a great search engine, making it easy to look up a brand on the fly while you are shopping.

So that’s the scoop on the new Baby Bargains book. Think of it as a whole house remodel—we hope you like it!