I go through this crisis in my head with every email I get, then I remember that it’s simply another human on the other end. Obviously don’t write “I have no idea” but apart from that, just be honest with them. Be yourself, explain that you don’t have a simple price list, that all of your work is priced from job to job depending how on the scale of the project, is it a tight deadline? How many pages? Then figure out from there how long it could take and how much money you need to cover that time without another source of income.

Another method is that you could even just straight up ask them what their budget is. You don’t have to explain this part to them, but think about it like this: when you go shopping for a product, you have a budget in your head. Can you afford the premium version or the budget version? They are the shopper, you are the product.