I'm embarking on this hive front end shenanigans as well so I may need to pick your brains at some point :)
While the dream may be to rely soley on hive, it's perfectly fine to use other things to help when it's needed ;D
Currently most of your audience are probably used to hanging out on "hive" (which they probably associate too specifically with hive.blog or peakd) because that's what they joined and that's what they're used to, and if they've been around a while might be following people that don't post novels and comics and they don't want to miss their posts and like me might be too lazy to keep jumping front ends. As time goes by you may find that you have more signups through Inkito itself and those people are more likely to only use Inkito, and people who originally joined "hive" to post their novels and comics and aren't following/interested in other stuff might also drift over because it's easier :)
That sums up pretty well my strategy. Last year I thought I could start bringing people over from outside the Hive realm but I realize that actually comes as a second step once the site is full of content.
Don't hesitate if you need help on your front end project. I mostly used the hive api documentation. I can even share my code if you wanna see how i did some parts.
Best of luck to you! ;-)